OF  T 


GEORGE   A.BART 


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l  oe 


THE  HEART 
OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

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THE    MACMILLAN    CO.    OF    CANADA,    LTD. 
TORONTO 


THELHEART  OF  THE 
CHRISTIAN    MESSAGE 


M.  A.,     PH.  n., 

PROFESSOR    OF    BIBLICAL    LITERATURE    AND    SEMITIC    LANGUAGES 
BRTN    MAWR    COLLEGE 


NEW  EDITION,  REVISED  AND  ENLARGED 


got* 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

IQI2 

Ml  rifhtt 


COPYRIGHT,  xgia 
By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  September,  igta 


TO 
THE   MEMORY  OF 

James   OE, 

FIRST   PRESIDENT   OF   BRYN   MAWR   COLLEGE 

WHO   BY   VOICE   AND   LIFE    ' 
WAS   A   POWERFUL   EXPONENT  OF 

THE 
CHRISTIAN   MESSAGE 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 

THE  lack  of  symmetry  which  the  first  edition 
exhibited  has  been  corrected  by  the  insertion  of  a 
chapter  on  "the  Christian  Message  according  to  the 
Reformers."  Slight  changes  and  improvements 
have  also  been  made  throughout  the  volume,  though 
in  all  essential  features  it  remains  unchanged. 

G.  A.  B. 


PREFACE 

THE  following  pages  were  prepared  as  a  course 
of  Lectures  for  the  Friends'  Summer  School  at 
Sagamore,  Massachusetts,  where  they  were  delivered 
in  1908.  They  have  since  appeared  as  a  series  of 
articles  in  the  Friends'  Quarterly  Examiner.  It  is 
hoped  that  in  this  more  permanent  form  they  may 
render  some  helpful  service. 

The  form  and  the  limits  were  imposed  upon  the 
material  by  the  demands  of  the  occasion.  No  ex- 
haustive treatment  could  be  given  in  so  brief  a  com- 
pass. All  that  could  be  hoped  was  that  the  Lectures 
should  suggestively  indicate  the  heart  of  the  Chris- 
tian Message  and  the  tendencies  of  Christian  history. 
They  were  written  to  help  busy  men  and  women 
who  had  no  access  to  the  extensive  literature  upon 
these  subjects.  It  is  hoped  that  they  may  still 
render  such  service.  The  writer,  a  specialist  in 
another  field,  has  for  years  found  an  inspiring 
avocation  in  the  field  treated  below.  He  is  aware 
that  on  many  of  these  subjects  there  are  wide  differ- 
ences of  opinion,  but  it  is  not  upon  such  differences 

ix 


X  PREFACE 

that  the  emphasis  should  be  laid.  One  should  rather 
strive  to  find  the  heart  of  the  Christian  Message 
under  all  its  varying  forms.  That  has  been  the 
writer's  effort ;  whether  he  has  succeeded,  the  reader 
must  judge. 

That  in  so  brief  a  compass  a  chapter  is  given  to 
the  Quakers  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  Lectures 
were  written  for  a  Friends'  School.  It  is  believed, 
however,  that  the  general  reader  will  find  that  the 
Quaker  movement  illustrates  the  fundamental  ele- 
ments of  the  Christian  Message  as  well  as  any  other 
epoch  of  the  Reformation. 

If  these  pages  shall  stimulate  any  one  to  more 
whole-hearted  efforts  for  the  establishment  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  the  writer's  highest  hopes  will  be 
realized. 

GEORGE  A.  BARTON. 

Bryn  Mawr,  Pa.,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 


I.    THE  MESSAGE  OF  CHRIST. 


II.    THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE  ACCORDING 

TO  PAUL...... 27 

III.  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE  IN  THE  Jo- 

HANNINE  WRITINGS 53 

IV.  THE    CHRISTIAN    MESSAGE    IN    THE 

EASTERN  CHURCH 76 

V.    THE    CHRISTIAN    MESSAGE    IN    THE 

WESTERN  CHURCH 102 

VI.    THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE  ACCORDING 

TO  THE  REFORMERS 129 

VII.    THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE  ACCORDING 

TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS 154 

VIII.    THE   CHRISTIAN    MESSAGE  FOR  THE 

TWENTIETH  CENTURY 182 

xi 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  MESSAGE  OF  CHRIST 

IN  the  New  Testament  four  clearly  defined 
periods  can  be  discerned,  and  in  each  of  these 
periods  the  Christian  message  was  presented  in 
different  ways.  These  periods  are:  (i)  Christ's 
ministry:  (2)  the  primitive  Jewish  Church:  (3)  the 
period  of  the  Apostle  Paul;  and  (4)  the  period  of 
the  Johannine  writings.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that 
it  is  easy  to  pigeon-hole  all  the  New  Testament 
writings  in  these  four  compartments,  for  there  are, 
of  course,  side  currents  and  intermixture.  The 
Apostle  Paul,  for  example,  started  somewhere  near 
the  Jewish  standpoint,  differing  from  it  mainly  in 
his  conception  of  the  abrogation  of  the  Jewish  Law 
by  the  crucifixion  of  Christ,  and  in  the  Epistles, 
written  during  his  Roman  captivity,  had  reached  a 
position  approaching  that  of  the  Johannine  writings. 
The  Book  of  Acts,  also,  while  belonging  on  the 
whole  to  the  primitive  Jewish  type  of  thought, 
exhibits  elements  of  kinship  to  Paul.  Again,  the 


2  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Synoptic  Gospels  contain  the  message  of  Christ, 
though  they  contain  also  elements  which  came  from 
the  Jewish  education  of  their  authors.  But  in  spite 
of  all  these  facts  it  is  possible  to  distinguish  clearly 
the  four  well-defined  types  of  New  Testament 
thought  indicated  above. 

The  first  of  these  types,  the  Message  of  Christ, 
is  the  subject  of  this  chapter.  The  third  and  fourth 
of  them  (the  Pauline  and  Johannine  conceptions 
of  the  message)  will  form  the  subjects  of  sub- 
sequent chapters.  The  second  one  (the  primitive 
Jewish-Christian  conception)  is  quite  commonly 
mistaken  for  New  Testament  Christianity,  and  is, 
accordingly,  already  in  good  degree  familiar. 

In  tracing  the  teaching  of  Jesus  it  is  necessary  to 
exercise  some  discernment.  The  Master's  earliest 
message  is  embedded  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  but 
those  Gospels  were  written  by  disciples  of  Jewish 
training,  who  did  not  fully  understand  His  mes- 
sage. It  seems  probable  that  much,  if  not  all,  of 
that  teaching  which  these  evangelists  attribute  to 
Christ  concerning  a  cataclysmic  ending  of  the  age 
and  a  coming  of  Christ  to  a  judgment  which  shall 
consign  the  wicked  to  flames,  is  transferred  bodily 
from  contemporaneous  Jewish  expectations  such  as 


THE    MESSAGE   OF   CHRIST  J 

are  expressed  in  their  apocalypses,  many  of  which 
are  now  known  to  us.  This  teaching  is  diametri- 
cally opposed  to  the  teaching  of  Christ  Himself.1 

1  In   books   on   the   Life    of   Christ   which    are   before   the 
public  today  five  different  lines  of  approach  are  exhibited. 

1.  There    is    the    old    uncritical    use    of    the    sources,    in 
which  everything  in  the  Gospels  is  harmonized,  and  the  two 
natures  of  Christ,  the  human  and  Divine,  are  assumed  to  be 
distinct.     Such  writers  as  Farrar,  Geikie,  and  Edersheim  are 
exponents  of  this  line  of  approach. 

2.  There   is  what  may  be  called  the   critico-psychological 
line  of  approach,  exhibited  in  such  writers  as  Baldensperger 
and   Oscar    Holtzmann.     This   school   accepts   the    results    of 
the   modern   literary   study    of   the   Gospels,   believes   in    the 
reality  of  the  humanity  of  Christ,  finds  his  Divine  nature  in 
the  perfection  of  the  human  and  in  Jesus'  own  consciousness, 
believes  that  Jesus  claimed  to  be  the  Messiah,  but  in  a  dif- 
ferent sense  than  that  entertained  by  the  Jews,  and  explains 
the  presence  of  large  portions  of  the  eschatological  material 
of  the  Gospels  as  importations  into  the  account  from  current 
Jewish  expectations.     The  members  of  this  school  agree  that 
Christ  was  incarnated  as  a  first  century  man,  but  differ  as 
to    the    extent    to    which    he    shared    current    expectations. 
Shailer   Mathews    (The   Messianic   Hope   in    the  New   Testa- 
ment) and  Dobschiits  (Eschatology  of  the  Gospels)  hold  that 
he  shared  a  considerable  portion  of  the  Jewish  conceptions; 
F.    E.    Scott    (The   Kingdom   and    the   Messiah)    and    C.   W. 
Emmet    (The  Eschatological  Question  in   the   Gospels)    grant 
the   Master  greater  independence  of  them,  though  they  go  a 
considerable   distance   with    the   others ;    while    B.    W.    Bacon 
(Jesus,  the  Son  of  God),  holds  that  Jesus'  conception  of  Him- 
self as  Messiah  was  a  sort  of  prophetic  elder  Brother,  whose 
function    was    to   bring   the    people    to    a    realization    of    the 
fatherhood   of   God,   and  that  it  lacked   apocalyptic   elements 
altogether. 

3.  There  is  the  eschatological  school   of  Johannes  Weiss 
and    Schweitzer,    who    hold    Jesus    responsible    for    all    the 


4  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

eschatological  utterances  of  the  Gospels  in  their  most  literal 
form.  According  to  this  school  Jesus  was  wholly  a  child  of 
his  age.  He  expected  when  He  rode  into  Jerusalem  that  the 
heavens  would  open  and  the  cataclysm  come,  and,  that  it  did 
not  come,  formed  a  part  of  the  agony  of  Gethsemane ! 
Schweitzer's  book,  entitled  in  its  English  edition,  The  Quest 
of  the  Historical  Jesus,  places  these  views  within  the  reach 
of  English  readers. 

4.  There   are  writers   like   Nathaniel    Schmidt,   who   deny 
that  Jesus  ever  claimed  to  be  the  Messiah  at  all,  and  to  whom 
Jesus  is  a  mere  man,  though  a  twentieth  century  man,  who 
had  little  intellectual  connection  with  his  age. 

5.  There  is  the  mythological  school  composed  of  such  writ- 
ers as  Jensen,  Drews,  and  W.  B.  Smith,  who  declare  that  Jesus 
never  lived ;  that  the  story  of  His  life  is  but  the  revamping 
of  old  heathen  myths. 

Of  these  five  methods  of  approach,  the  first  and  last  are 
on  scholarly  grounds  impossible.  The  first  ignores  the  his- 
torical sifting  of  sources  necessary  to  a  scientific  work,  the 
last  ignores  historical  evidence  altogether.  Its  reasonings 
have  been  rightly  pronounced  "elaborate  bosh."  The  third 
method  fails  to  take  into  account  the  certainty  that  the  early 
Gospel-traditions  were  to  some  degree  colored  by  the  media 
through  which  they  passed,  and  wholly  fails  to  account 
for  the  unique  influence  of  Jesus.  The  fourth  method  is 
historically  faulty  in  that  it  fails  to  account  for  the  con- 
nection of  a  Messianic  tradition  with  Jesus.  It  as  com- 
pletely cuts  Him  off  from  any  historical  connection  with  his 
age,  as  the  third  view  buries  Him  under  the  conceptions  of 
his  contemporaries.  The  one  method  of  approach  that  at  once 
conserves  the  demands  of  historical  scholarship  and  of  re- 
ligion is  the  second,  though  in  the  application  of  this  there 
are  yet  many  unsettled  questions.  One  of  these  is  the  degree 
to  which  Jesus,  as  a  first  century  Jew,  could  combine  current 
Jewish  Messianic  expectations  with  those  spiritual  views  of 
His  which  so  completely  transcended  them.  This  is  a  point 
on  which  opinions  will  differ  for  some  time  to  come.  To  the 
writer  it  seems  clear  that  Jesus  cannot  be  held  responsible  for 
that  material  which  contradicts  the  spirit  of  His  teaching. 
It  is  characteristic  of  a  religious  genius  to  transcend  the 


THE   MESSAGE   OF   CHRIST  5 

thought  of  his  time.  In  his  direct  perception  of  what  is 
consonant  with  the  character  of  God,  he  leaps  the  centuries. 
This  was  true  of  Amos,  of  Paul,  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  of 
George  Fox.  To  believe  less  of  Jesus  is  to  think  Him  less 
than  they. 

In  making  our  estimate  of  the  Master's  message, 
therefore,  we  shall  omit  that  which  has  evidently 
been  taken  over  from  Judaism  into  the  Gospels. 
This  is  not  the  place  to  give  detailed  reasons  for  so 
doing.  Such  discussion  belongs  to  the  threshing- 
machine  of  the  study  or  the  class-room;  we  wish 
reverently  to  approach  the  great  granary,  and,  apart 
from  the  dust  of  the  critical  threshing-machine, 
to  partake  of  the  pure  wheat  itself.1 

Jesus  Christ  brought  to  the  world  a  new  message. 
Of  course  it  contained  elements  that  had  been  pro- 
minent in  previous  systems — elements  too  that  had 
been  prominent  in  the  teachings  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment prophets,  and  yet  in  its  selection  of  these  and 
the  elimination  of  others,  in  its  added  spiritual 
grasp,  its  insight  into  the  heart  of  God  and  man, 
and  the  unique  whole  which  was  thus  produced,  it 
was  in  an  important  sense  new. 

1  It  is  enough  to  say  that  two,  at  least,  of  our  first  three 
Gospels  were  based  on  previously  written  documents.  Most 
scholars  hold  that  these  documents  were  two  in  number.  The 
writer  agrees  with  Professor  Burton  in  holding  that  there 
were  four  (see  Decennial  Publications  of  the  University  of 
Chicago,  First  Series,  vol.  v.,  pp.  195-264). 


6  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

It  was,  however,  related  not  only  to  the  remote, 
but  to  the  immediate  past,  and  fitted  to  the  needs  of 
the  moment  when  it  was  delivered.  As  a  rare  com- 
bination of  eternal  principles  with  the  demands  of 
the  hour  the  message  is  also  unique. 

This  message  took  shape  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  in 
a  great  experience,  for  He  was  so  much  one  of  us 
that  He  "grew  in  wisdom  and  stature,"  and  under- 
went the  psychological  development  of  a  normal 
mind.  This  great  experience  is  worthy  of  our 
study,  because  it  reveals  to  us  how  His  message  was 
related  to  the  thought  of  His  time,  how  it  differed 
from  it,  and  brings  us  face  to  face  with  some  of  the 
new  elements  of  eternal  value  in  it. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  Jesus  had  always 
possessed  an  extraordinary  consciousness  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God.  This  consciousness  had  as  one 
of  its  constituent  elements  a  unique  sense  of  moral 
oneness  with  the  Father.  His  question,  "Did  ye 
not  know  that  I  must  be  in  the  things  of  My 
Father?"  as  well  as  the  absence  of  any  trace  of 
a  consciousness  of  sin  in  Him,  are  proofs  of  this. 
But  the  consciousness  of  a  Messianic  mission  up  to 
the  time  of  His  baptism  was  not,  apparently,  a  part 
of  His  conception  of  Himself. 


THE   MESSAGE  OF  CHRIST  7 

The  Jews  of  the  time  were  looking  for  a  Messiah 
who  should  establish  an  earthly  kingdom.  We  now 
know  the  character  of  the  Messiah  of  their  expecta- 
tions from  many  different  apocalypses.  From  these 
apocalypses  we  learn  that,  though  the  conceptions 
were  not  uniform,  there  was  a  growing  tendency  to 
regard  the  Messiah  as  a  heavenly  being,  who  had 
enjoyed  a  long  pre-existence  with  God.  Those  who 
did  not  hold  this  view,  and  who  believed  the  Messiah 
would  be  born  on  the  earth,  thought  that  He  would 
be  caught  up  to  God  to  await  the  proper  time  of  His 
manifestation.  Both  classes  agreed  that  He  would 
be  revealed  from  heaven  at  the  proper  moment,  that 
He  would  place  Himself  at  the  head  of  Israel's 
armies,  and  with  supernatural  power  overcome  her 
enemies,  and  make  the  Jews  the  masters  of  the 
world. 

The  Pharisaic  circle  of  sympathisers  in  Galilee,  to 
which  Joseph  and  Mary  belonged,  must  have  been 
familiar  with  many  of  these  phases  of  the  Messianic 
hope  of  the  times.  They  were  a  part  of  the  theo- 
logical atmosphere  in  which  He  was  reared,  and  He 
was  no  doubt  familiar  with  many  of  the  highly 
supernatural  features  of  these  expectations.  And 
yet  His  human  life  was  so  natural,  and  His  con- 


8  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

sciousness  of  union  with  the  Father  so  spiritual, 
that  it  apparently  never  occurred  to  Him  during 
His  early  years  to  think  of  Himself  as  the  expected 
Messiah. 

This  was  the  situation  when  He,  passing  along 
the  Jordan  valley,  heard  the  preaching  of  John  the 
Baptist,  and  submitted  to  his  baptism.  As  Mark 
describes  that  event  he  makes  it  clear  to  the  dis- 
cerning reader  that  a  new  opening  came  to  Jesus 
then.  With  many  reverent  scholars  I  believe  that 
the  voice  which  said,  "Thou  art  my  beloved  Son," 
was  a  voice  in  Jesus'  own  soul.  It  represents  the 
bursting  of  the  thought  upon  Him,  that  He  was 
called  to  be  the  Messiah — that  the  meaning  of  His 
unbroken  relation  to  God  was  that  it  was  His 
privilege  to  perform  for  His  countrymen  the  Mes- 
sianic mission. 

The  dawning  of  this  consciousness  drove  the 
Saviour  into  retirement.1  The  call  to  this  new  mis- 

1  To  those  who  hare  been  educated  on  the  old  categories  of 
thought,  it  seems  at  first  like  a  denial  of  the  Deity  of  Christ 
to  speak  of  a  growth  in  His  consciousness.  A  little  reflection 
shows  that  even  on  the  old  categories  this  is  not  so.  A  real 
incarnation  involves  a  real  human  psychology ;  God  incarnate 
in  a  human  body  without  a  human  mind  would  be  God  incar- 
nate in  an  animal,  not  in  a  man.  St.  Luke  saw  more  clearly. 
"Jesus  grew  in  wisdom  as  well  as  in  stature,"  he  tells  us. 
(Luke  ii.  52.) 


THE   MESSAGE  OF   CHRIST  9 

sion  had  to  be  adjusted  to  His  inner  life — the  mission 
itself  had  to  be  adjusted  to  what  He  knew  of  God. 
This  adjustment  was  a  psychological  or  spiritual 
process.  The  story  of  it  is  told  in  the  Gospels  in 
objective  terms ;  but  this  is  in  accord  with  the  cus- 
toms of  Oriental  narrative.  The  narrative  is  called 
the  account  of  the  Temptation  of  Christ. 

The  heart  of  these  temptations  was  the  decision 
of  what  kind  of  Messiah  He  would  be,  and  what 
kind  of  a  Messianic  kingdom  He  would  establish. 
The  Jews  were  expecting  a  Messiah  who  would  be 
a  supernatural  warrior  who  would  sit  on  an  earthly 
throne  triumphant  over  his  enemies,  and  would  rule 
politically  over  the  bodies  of  men.  As  Jesus  knew 
the  Father,  however,  He  knew  that  a  kingdom  estab- 
lished by  such  measures  would  be  out  of  harmony 
with  God,  because  out  of  harmony  with  the  highest 
ethical  and  spiritual  principles.  Such  a  kingdom 
was  not  humanity's  greatest  need. 

Men  needed  more  than  anything  to  come  directly 
under  the  rule  of  God;  to  know  God,  not  as  a  ter- 
rible Ruler  but  as  a  loving  Father.  They  needed 
a  kingdom  of  God,  but  a  kingdom  founded  not  on 
force  but  on  love — a  kingdom  to  which  the  allegi- 
ance of  loving  souls  should  bind  them  in  response 


IO         THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

to  a  revelation  of  God's  character;  not  a  kingdom 
into  which  they  should  be  swept  by  violence,  and  in 
which  they  should  be  kept  by  fear. 

From  the  temptation  Jesus  emerged  with  a  new 
conception  of  the  Messianic  kingdom — the  kingdom 
of  God — and  with  a  new  conception,  too,  of  the 
mission  of  the  Messiah.  The  kingdom  was  to  exist 
first  in  the  spirits  of  men  before  it  was  to  have  an 
external  organization.  It  must  get  into  men  before 
men  could  get  into  it.  Its  method  of  conquest  was 
to  be  neither  arms  nor  supernatural  cataclysms,  but 
loving  and  unselfish  service.  The  role  of  the  Mes- 
siah was  to  be,  not  that  of  a  political  agitator,  or  a 
military  leader,  but  that  of  a  teacher,  a  friend,  a 
neighbour,  a  physician,  a  loving  companion,  a  helper, 
a  servant.1 

There  is  not  time,  neither  is  this  the  place,  to  stay 
to  point  out  the  means  taken  by  Jesus  to  promulgate 
these  views — how  He  chose  the  term,  "Son  of 
Man,"  at  once  to  conceal  and  later  to  reveal  his 

1  Some  scholars  deny  the  historical  character  of  the  tempta- 
tion of  Jesus,  and  hold  also  that  He  did  not  claim  to  be  the 
Messiah.  So,  for  example,  Schmidt,  Prophet  of  Nazareth, 
pp.  262  ff.  The  reasons  for  denying  Schmidt's  position,  and 
maintaining  the  position  here  set  forth,  have  been  stated  by  the 
writer  in  the  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  vol.  xvii.  pp. 

1 10-120. 


THE   MESSAGE  OF  CHRIST  II 

Messianic  claim.  It  is  our  business  rather  to  note 
the  new  conception  of  the  kingdom  of  God  here  put 
forth.  Jesus  took  the  term  out  of  the  realm  of 
politics  and  transferred  it  to  the  realm  of  religion. 
He  taught  by  it  that  it  is  every  man's  privilege  to 
come  under  the  direct  personal  guidance  of  God, 
that  it  is  every  man's  duty  to  come  into  intimate 
personal  relations  with  Him.  As  the  Messiah  of 
such  a  kingdom  He  exhibited  in  His  person  and 
experience  the  ideal  of  one  who  enjoyed  in  their  ful- 
ness personal  relations  with  the  Father,  and  in  His 
work  and  teaching  He  revealed  in  all  their  beauty 
the  principles  and  the  spirit  of  the  kingdom. 

This  teaching  concerning  the  kingdom  lifted  the 
kingdom  out  of  the  realm  of  a  formal  monarchy  and 
translated  it  into  a  family.  And  this  fact  brings  us 
to  the  heart  of  the  message  of  Jesus  concerning  God. 
In  His  teaching  God  is  no  longer  a  far-off  ruler,  or 
a  stern  and  terrible  judge.  God  is  a  loving  Father. 
The  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  gives  us  the  heart 
of  His  message  on  this  point.  The  son  is  thought- 
less and  selfish ;  he  wanders  from  the  father's  house ; 
he  degrades  himself  with  a  sinful  life  in  a  far 
country;  but  the  father  never  forgets  him,  never 
hates  him,  never  despairs  of  him.  To  the  end  the 


12          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

father  scans  the  homeward  way  ready  to  catch  the 
first  glimpse  of  the  repentant  boy,  that  he  may 
hasten  to  welcome  him  home. 

The  heart  of  the  message  of  Christ  is  the  loving 
Fatherhood  of  God.  To  this  He  gave  a  new  reality 
in  the  minds  of  men.  The  early  Semites  had 
thought  of  God  as  love,  but  in  a  gross,  physical, 
sensual  way.  Hosea  had  taught  that  God  is  a 
father,  but  His  fatherhood  is  limited  to  Israel;  In 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  God  is  the  God  of  the  world. 
His  love  goes  out  to  all.  His  kingdom  is  a  large 
family,  in  which  the  Father  rules  through  love. 
Into  this  family  all  are  welcomed,  as  rapidly  as  they 
turn  from  sin  and  turn  their  faces  with  resolution 
toward  the  light. 

This  attitude  of  ready  forgiveness  is  further  illus- 
trated in  the  parable  of  the  Pharisee  and  the  Pub- 
lican. He  who  would  not  so  much  as  lift  his  eyes 
up  to  heaven,  but  smote  his  breast,  saying,  "God, 
be  merciful  to  me  a  sinner,"  went  down  to  his 
house  "justified,"  because  his  attitude  was  one  of 
sincere  penitence,  and  God,  as  a  tender  Father, 
hastens  to  bestow  His  forgiveness  upon  such. 

This  idea  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  runs  through 
all  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  In  speaking  of  the  fowls 


THE   MESSAGE  OF   CHRIST  13 

of  the  air  he  reminds  his  disciples  that  it  is  "your 
Father"  that  feedeth  them.  The  prayer  which  He 
taught  his  disciples  begins:  "Our  Father."  The 
parental  relation  lies  at  the  basis  of  Jesus'  concep- 
tion of  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

Indeed,  the  whole  message  of  Jesus  concerning 
God  is  a  reversal  of  the  conceptions  of  Him  which 
were  held  by  many  at  that  time,  and  have  been  held 
by  many  during  the  centuries  since.  It  is  very 
natural,  in  consideration  of  the  ways  in  which  the 
conception  of  God  has  developed,  for  the  many  to 
think  of  God  as  a  far-off  sovereign  and  as  a  terrible 
judge.  Jesus,  on  the  other  hand,  revealed  God  as  a 
loving  friend  who,  so  far  from  holding  the  sinner 
aloof,  wins  the  sinner  from  wicked  ways  by  trusting 
him.  This  is  the  teaching  of  the  incident  of  the 
woman  taken  in  adultery,  a  passage  which,  though 
now  found  in  the  Gospel  of  John,  was,  as  Tischen- 
dorf  saw,  not  written  for  the  connection  where  it 
now  stands.  It  is  found  in  some  manuscripts  after 
the  2 ist  chapter  of  Luke,  and  belongs  as  much  to 
the  Synoptic  teaching  as  to  the  Gospel  of  John. 

Men  meet  the  sinner — especially  the  feminine 
sinner — however  penitent  she  may  be,  with  denun- 
ciation, punishment,  and  scorn.  Jesus  met  this 


14          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE  ' 

sinner  with  trust  and  kindness,  and  by  these  called 
forth  penitence  within  her.  He  who  worked  the 
works  of  his  Father  was  not  more  kind  than  the 
Father.  He  would  always  teach  us  that  the  Father 
was  as  kind  as  He.  If  Jesus  trusted  the  sinful 
woman,  he  would  thereby  teach  us  that  God  trusts 
the  sinner;  that  in  this  love  the  Father's  love  is 
manifested.  Thus  God  would  win  men  back  to  His 
family,  and  persuade  them  to  reenter  filial  relations 
with  Himself. 

This  was  the  heart  of  Jesus'  message  concerning 
God.  In  speaking  of  the  way  God  wins  men  we  are 
naturally  led  to  consider  Jesus'  view  of  His  own 
relation  to  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  or,  in  other  words,  the  means  of  redemption 
and  atonement. 

The  forgiveness  which  Jesus  extended  to  the 
sinful  woman  in  the  incident  just  discussed  was 
extended  without  any  reference  to  atonement,  and, 
indeed,  without  any  profession  of  faith  on  her  part. 
This  attitude  is  revealed  also  in  an  incident  in  the 
early  ministry  of  Christ,  recorded  in  Mark  ii.  5, 
Matt.  ix.  2,  and  Luke  v.  20,  where  Jesus  said  to  the 
man  sick  of  palsy,  "thy  sins  are  forgiven  thee."  It 
is  true  that  the  evangelists  say  that  He  said  this 


THE    MESSAGE   OF   CHRIST  1 5 

because  He  saw  the  faith  of  those  who  brought  the 
man,  but  even  so,  no  statement  is  made  as  to  the 
faith  of  the  man  himself,  and  Jesus  makes  no  refer- 
ence to  any  means  by  which  forgiveness  is  to  be 
mediated. 

At  the  beginning  then  of  Jesus'  career  He  speaks 
of  forgiveness  much  in  the  terms  of  the  parable  of 
the  Prodigal  Son.  The  conditions  of  forgiveness 
are  not  there  set  forth. 

It  seems  possible  from  this  point  to  trace  a  devel- 
opment in  the  consciousness  of  Jesus.  There  is  a 
series  of  passages  in  which  forgiveness  is  mediated 
by  His  word.  One  of  these  is  the  quotation  from 
Isaiah  in  Luke  iv.  18,  19: — 

"The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  Me, 
Because  He  hath  anointed  Me  to  preach  good  tidings  to 

the  poor: 
He  hath  sent  Me  to  proclaim  release  to  the  captives,  and 

recovering  of  sight  to  the  blind, 
To  set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised, 
And  to  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord." 

Here  forgiveness  and  salvation  are  mediated  by 
the  Master's  word.  Again,  in  Matt.  xi.  5,  the  sign 
of  the  Messianic  age  to  which  the  attention  of  the 
discouraged  Baptist  is  called  is:  "The  poor  have 
good  tidings  preached  to  them."  Again,  in  Luke  xi. 
29-32,  Nineveh  repented  at  the  preaching  of  Jonah, 


l6          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

and  "behold  a  greater  than  Jonah  is  here"  em- 
phasizes the  same  means — preaching — of  bringing 
the  world  to  God. 

The  same  phase  of  Christ's  teaching  appears  in 
the  Parable  of  the  Sower  (Mark  iv.  and  Matt,  xiii.), 
for  in  this  parable  the  seed  which  may  be  choked,  or 
carried  away  by  the  owners  of  wings,  or  may  perish 
for  lack  of  depth  and  moisture,  or  may  bear  thirty, 
sixty,  or  a  hundredfold,  is  declared  by  Jesus  Him- 
self to  be  the  Word  proclaimed  by  the  Son  of  Man. 

In  another  class  of  passages  Jesus  expresses  the 
conviction  that  forgiveness  is  mediated  by  His 
person.  One  of  the  most  striking  of  these  passages 
begins  at  Matt.  xi.  25.  Although  the  chronological 
setting  of  this  passage  is  now  lost,  the  phrase  "at 
that  season,"  with  which  it  begins,  indicates  that 
originally  the  consciousness  that  the  place  of  an 
individual  in  the  higher  life  was  determined  by  atti- 
tude towards  Christ's  person  came  to  Jesus  at  a 
definite  time.  This  conviction  probably  marks  a 
stage  in  the  consciousness  of  the  Master.  The 
struggle  of  His  ministry  was  becoming  more  severe. 
The  consciousness  itself  He  expressed  in  these 
words:  "All  things  are  delivered  unto  Me  of  My 
Father;  and  no  man  knoweth  the  Son  but  the 


THE   MESSAGE  OF  CHRIST  17 

Father,  neither  knoweth  any  man  the  Father  save 
the  Son,  and  he  to  whom  the  Son  willeth  to  reveal 
Him.  Come  unto  me  all  ye  that  labour  and  are 
heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest.  Take  My 
yoke  upon  you  and  learn  of  Me,  for  I  am  meek  and 
lowly  in  heart,  and  ye  shall  find  rest  to  your  souls." 

To  the  same  purpose  is  Luke  xii.  8,  9:  "Every 
one  who  shall  confess  Me  before  men,  him  shall  the 
Son  of  Man  confess  before  the  angels  of  God;  but 
he  that  denieth  Me  in  the  presence  of  men  shall  be 
denied  in  the  presence  of  the  angels  of  God." 
Similarly,  in  Matt.  xii.  30,  we  read:  "He  that  is 
not  with  Me  is  against  Me,  and  he  that  gathereth 
not  with  Me  scattereth  abroad." 

As  the  ministry  of  Jesus  progressed,  then,  it 
appears  that  He  passed  from  the  conviction  that  the 
simple  proclamation  of  the  message  of  God  would 
bring  in  the  kingdom,  to  the  conviction  that  in  some 
way  His  person  had  a  primary  function  in  medi- 
ating it. 

From  this  conviction  the  thought  of  Jesus  passed 
on  to  one  other,  viz.,  that  somehow  the  mediation 
of  the  kingdom  involved  His  death.  This  convic- 
tion seemed  to  have  formed  itself  clearly  in  the 
mind  of  Jesus  towards  the  close  of  His  ministry, 


l8          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

when  at  Caesarea  Philippi  He  finally  drew  from  the 
disciples  the  confession  of  His  Messiahship.  Im- 
mediately afterwards  (Mark  viii.  31)  He  "began  to 
teach  them  that  the  Son  of  Man  must  be  rejected  by 
the  elders  and  the  chief  priests  and  the  scribes  and 
be  killed." 

A  little  later  when,  on  the  journey  to  Jerusalem, 
the  sons  of  Zebedee  made  their  ambitious  request 
for  preferment  in  the  new  kingdom,  and  He  had 
occasion  to  teach  His  angry  disciples  that  service, 
not  position,  was  the  great  thing  in  the  new  realm, 
He  used  this  comparison  (Mark  x.  45)  :  "For  verily 
the  Son  of  Man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but 
to  minister,  and  to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for  many." 
This  is  not  the  place  to  rehearse  the  theories  which 
in  the  course  of  the  centuries  have  been  built  upon 
these  words.  It  is  enough  to  notice  here  that  the 
thing  in  which  men  are  held  captive  is  sin.  It  is 
from  sinning  that  Jesus  came  to  redeem  men.  The 
giving  of  His  life  was  the  supreme  act  of  the  service 
by  which  He  sought  to  accomplish  that  redemption. 
He  probably  did  not  think,  then,  of  giving  His  life 
as  a  ransom  to  Satan,  or  as  a  ransom  paid  by  God's 
love  to  God's  justice,  nor  as  a  vicarious  substitution 
in  bearing  the  death-penalty  of  the  sinner,  nor  even 


THE    MESSAGE   OF    CHRIST  19 

as  an  example  in  order  to  maintain  the  government 
of  God.  He  rather  thought  of  it  as  the  act  most 
likely  to  produce  the  experience  of  repentance  in  the 
mind  of  a  sinner,  and  so,  on  account  of  its  psycho- 
logical effect  on  the  unrepentant,  a  principal  means 
of  redemption. 

Then,  lastly,  there  are  the  words  uttered  at  the 
Last  Supper  (Mark  xiv.  23,  24;  Matt.  xxvi.  27,  28; 
Luke  xxii.  18,  19)  :  "this  is  My  blood  of  the  cove- 
nant" (many  ancient  authorities  read  "new  cove- 
nant") "which  is  shed  for  many."  The  word 
"covenant" — especially  if  it  was  "new  covenant" 
— carries  the  thought  back  at  once  to  the  sealing  of 
the  covenant  at  Mount  Sinai  (Exodus  xxiv.  i-n). 
In  the  case  of  that  covenant  the  sacrifices  simply 
sealed  the  contract.  They  bound  God  and  man 
together  in  a  solemn  covenant.  By  this  reference 
Jesus  suggests  that  His  death  seals  a  new  covenant 
between  God  and  man — a  covenant  which  binds  the 
human  creature  and  the  Divine  Creator  together  in 
a  higher  and  better  bond. 

Looking  at  the  ministry  of  Jesus  as  a  whole,  then, 
we  find  that  in  all  parts  of  it  He  expressed  God's 
willingness  to  forgive  sin,  but  that  as  His  ministry 
progressed  He  became  increasingly  impressed  with 


2O          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

the  difficulty  of  bringing  man  to  realize  the  need  of 
forgiveness  and  to  accept  it.  At  first  He  looked  to 
the  mere  willingness  of  God  to  forgive  as  all-suffi- 
cient. Then  He  saw  at  different  periods  that  this 
willingness  would  have  to  be  mediated  by  His 
preaching,  then  by  His  personal  influence,  and, 
lastly,  by  the  eloquent  pleading  of  His  death. 

Throughout  all  this,  however,  His  one  message 
was  God's  readiness  to  forgive,  and  God's  anxious 
longing  to  welcome  sinners  home.  The  different 
degrees  in  the  means  employed  only  indicate  that 
as  the  ministry  advanced  the  Master,  who  shared 
with  us  a  real  human  psychology,  became  increas- 
ingly conscious  that  to  win  men  the  message  must 
be  proclaimed,  not  in  word  only  but  with  all  the 
magnetic  influence  of  the  Divinest  personality,  and 
all  the  moving  eloquence  of  the  sublimest  self- 
sacrifice. 

If  now  we  turn  from  the  means  by  which,  in  the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  the  work  of  bringing  men  into 
the  kingdom  was  to  be  accomplished,  to  the  ideal 
which  He  set  before  every  man,  we  find  His  ideal 
expressed  in  these  words  (Matt.  v.  48)  :  "Ye,  there- 
fore, shall  be  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  which  is  in 
heaven  is  perfect."  These  words,  interpreted  by 


THE   MESSAGE  OF  CHRIST  21 

their   context,   mean   that  men  are   to   love   their 
neighbours ;  to  be  kind,  considerate,  and  unclannish ; 
N.      to  be  broad  in  their  sympathies,  and  not  vindictive 
in  their  attitude  to  any.     They  may  not  equal  in  the 
/    degree  of  their  perfections  those  of  the   Infinite 
Father,  but  they  may  become  perfect  children  as  He 
is  a  perfect  Father. 

This  thought  of  Jesus  set  before  men  a  loftier 
V. 
destiny  than  they  had  before  dared  to  dream  of.    It 

is  Hosea's  old  conception  of  the  sonship  of  Israel, 
transfigured  by  being  made  ethical,  spiritual,  and 
universal. 

The  whole  message  of  the  kingdom  of  God  in  all 
the  aspects  in  which  Jesus  proclaimed  it  presented 
an  inner,  spiritual  side,  and  an  outer,  social  side.  If 
it  involves  the  idea  of  God  as  Father,  it  also  involves 
the  idea  of  men  as  children  of  God  and  accordingly 
brethren.  Children  of  the  same  perfect  Father 
should  dwell  in  harmony  and  love.  Men  cannot 
pray  "Our  Father,"  without  thinking  of  one  another 
as  brethren.  To  think  of  one  another  as  brethren 
is  to  abolish  war,  whether  political  or  industrial ;  to 
abolish  sweat-shops,  and  other  forms  of  slavery; 
and  to  seek  to  realise  the  Divine  brotherhood  in 
political  and  social  institutions.  To  seek  to  be  per- 


22          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

feet  as  the  Father  is  perfect  is  to  imitate  His  attitude 
of  love,  of  kindliness,  and  of  universal  regard  for 
all  men.  If,  then,  one  starts  out  simply  in  his  own 
person  to  realize  the  Divine  ideal  of  character  as 
taught  by  Jesus,  it  leads  to  the  same  end,  for  this 
cannot  be  accomplished  without  assuming  an  atti- 
tude towards  others  which  must  inevitably  work  the 
spirit  of  Christ  down  into  the  warp  and  woof  of 
human  institutions. 

Approach  the  problem  as  we  will,  therefore — from 
the  side  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  fatherhood  of  God,  or  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  self-realisation  of  the  individual — the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  if  really  followed,  leads  us  to  the 
same  social  goal.  It  looks  not  only  to  the  creation 
of  a  perfect  society  in  heaven,  but  also  the  produc- 
tion on  this  earth  of  a  social  fabric  which  shall  in  its 
structure  reveal  and  express  through  a  real  brother- 
hood the  Divine  love  which  springs  from  the  com- 
mon Father. 

The  teaching  of  Jesus  on  this  point  is  very  con- 
crete. He  had  no  faith  in  the  coming  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  through  sentimental  dreams  which 
produced  no  action.  The  parable  of  the  Good 
Samaritan  is  a  case  in  point.  The  priest  who 


THE   MESSAGE  OF   CHRIST  23 

"passed  by  on  the  other  side"  may  have  been  a  very 
good  man.  He  may  have  been  engaged  at  the 
moment  in  going  to  bring  some  money  from  a 
Levitical  city  to  expend  on  the  Temple  ritual ;  or  he 
may  have  been  on  his  way  to  one  of  the  cities  of  the 
Decapolis  to  persuade  some  devout  soul  to  become  a 
Jewish  proselyte.  Such  services  would  correspond 
to  raising  money  to  pay  off  church  debts,  or  attend- 
ing to  mission-work,  or  to  holding  revival  meetings 
now.  He  may  have  been  of  a  kindly  disposition, 
too.  Possibly  he  said :  "There  is  a  difficult  problem. 
If  I  were  not  so  hurried  with  this  important  church- 
work  I  should  like  to  stop  and  investigate  it" !  Sim- 
ilarly the  Levite  may  have  been  engaged  in  some 
important  religious  mission.  He  may  have  belonged 
to  the  musical  division  of  the  Levites,  and  may  have 
been  hurrying  to  Jerusalem  to  teach  them  some  new 
cantillation  for  the  sacred  text  that  was  to  be  read 
at  the  next  feast.  It  may  not  have  been  entirely 
due  to  an  exclusive  spirit  but  the  pressure  of  sacred 
engagements  may  have  led  him  to  "pass  by  on  the 
other  side."  It  was  only  the  despised  Samaritan 
schismatic  or  heretic  that  had  leisure  enough  to 
stop  and  give  the  sufferer  personal  attention,  and 
humanity  enough  to  perform  the  simple  duties  of 


24          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

helpfulness  which  kindness  prompted.  Does  not 
Jesus  teach  us  here  the  practical,  personal  nature 
of  that  helpful  service  which  is  needed  to  bring  in 
the  kingdom  of  heaven? 

Several  books  have  been  written  in  recent  years 
on  the  social  teaching  of  Jesus.  No  writer  has 
shown  more  convincingly  than  Dr.  Peabody  that  in 
the  spirit  which  Jesus  inculcates  the  social  and 
industrial  problems  of  our  time  find  their  solution. 
In  the  pages  of  his  book1  it  is  made  clear  that  no 
artificial  distribution  of  property  will  bring  in  the 
Millennium;  that  no  industrial  legislation  will 
bring  about  ideal  conditions.  With  broad  induc- 
tion and  adequate  learning  he  has  convincingly 
shown  that  it  is  only  as  the  spirit  of  brotherhood 
as  taught  by  Christ  is  realized,  and  employer  and 
employee  each  become  able  to  look  at  the  other 
as  a  brother  should,  that  social  and  industrial  prob- 
lems can  fye  solved.  It  is  not  a  change  in  the 
machinery  of  production,  nor  an  alteration  in  the 
methods  of  distribution,  nor  the  levelling  of  social 
inequalities  by  artificial  flatirons  that  will  achieve 
the  goal,  but  change  in  human  nature  itself — the 
replacing  of  the  selfish  by  the  unselfish  spirit — 

1  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question. 


THE  MESSAGE  OF  CHRIST  2$ 

the  spirit  of  the  animal  by  the  spirit  of  Christ 
The  Message  of  Christ  was  a  most  comprehensive 
message.  It  brought  to  the  world  a  new  revelation 
of  God's  attitude  to  man,  a  new  and  spiritual  con- 
ception of  the  kingdom  of  God — a  conception  which 
translated  it  into  a  family  of  which  God  is  the 
Father  and  all  men  are  brethren.  It  held  before 
the  individual  as  an  ideal  the  realisation  in  his 
human  life  of  the  spirit  and  character  of  the  Father, 
and  it  looked  to  the  realisation  in  earthly  society  of 
a  real  human  brotherhood. 

The  Message  of  Christ  is  unique  in  the  way  in 
which  it  combines  the  loftiest  spiritual  experiences 


with  the  homeliest  human  duties.  At  the  end  of  his 
book,  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Christian  Character,  Pro- 
fessor Peabody  has  a  chapter  entitled  "The  Ascent 
of  Ethics,"  in  which  he  shows  that  in  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  there  is  no  duty  however  humble,  no 
service  however  insignificant,  that  does  not  rest  in 
the  last  analysis  upon  a  foundation  of  the  sublimest 
Taith.  This  chapter  is  followed  by  another,  entitled 
"The  Descent  of  Faith,"  the  burden  of  which  is 
that  in  the  Master's  teaching  there  is  no  faith  so 
sublime  and  spiritual  that  it  does  not  descend  to 
link  itself  to  the  homeliest  duties. 


2,6          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

In  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  mediated  by  the  teach- 
ing, the  person,  and  the  sufferings  of  Christ,  this 
sublime  faith  is  begotten.  In  the  "Descent  of 
Faith"  and  the  "Ascent  of  Ethics,"  so  that  the 
former  finds  adequate  expression  in  the  latter,  the 
individual  is  to  realise  his  destiny  by  the  revelation 
in  himself  of  the  Divine  image;  industrial  problems 
are  to  be  solved  and  social  ills  are  to  be  righted,  and 
the  kingdom,  already  potential  in  the  experience  of 
individuals,  is  to  come  in  an  earthly  society. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL 

THE  Apostle  Paul  holds  a  unique  place  in  early 
Christianity.  After  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus  had 
terminated,  the  Twelve  and  the  other  disciples  con- 
tinued the  work  of  the  Master,  but  they  continued 
it  as  though  it  were  designed  especially  for  the  Jews. 
Christianity  became  a  Jewish  sect.  It  accepted  the 
validity  of  the  Jewish  law,  and  cherished  all  the 
hopes  of  Jewish  eschatology.  Its  moral  life  may 
have  been  a  little  more  noble  than  that  of  contem- 
porary Judaism,  but  otherwise  it  differed  from 
Judaism  only  in  its  belief  that  Jesus  was  the  Mes- 
siah. He  had  been  caught  up  to  heaven,  only  that, 
in  accordance  with  the  expectations  of  the  apoc- 
alyptists,  he  might,  when  the  age  was  ripe  for  the 
final  cataclysm,  be  revealed  again.  The  Gospel 
was  preached  to  none  but  Jews,  and  no  one  (except, 
possibly,  Stephen)  had  an  idea  that  a  Gentile  could 
become  a  Christian  without  first  becoming  a  Jew. 

The  man  who  changed  all  this  and  started  Chris- 
27 


28          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

tianity  on  its  career  as  a  universal  religion  was  the 
Apostle  Paul. 

St.  Paul  was  a  many-sided  man.  He  was  at  once 
a  Rabbi  and  a  mystic;  a  man  of  affairs  and  an 
independent  thinker;  a  master  of  men  and  a  re- 
ligious devotee.  Moreover,  in  his  long  life  he  under- 
went a  marked  development  in  his  spiritual  thought ; 
'his  grasp  of  the  significance  of  Christ  and  his 
understanding  of  his  mission  steadily  increasing  to 
the  end.  Although  his  writings  have  influenced 
Christian  theology  more  than  those  of  any  other 
man,  Paul  has  been  so  misunderstood  by  those  whom 
he  has  influenced  that  his  impress  as  stamped  upon 
Christian  theology  is  in  reality  a  caricature  of  his 
real  thought. 

I  shall  try  to  set  forth,  as  I  understand  it,  his 
real  thought  as  he  himself  shows  that  it  developed 
in  his  mind,  and  we  shall  thus  be  able  to  see  the 
'form  which  the  Christian  message,  as  uttered  by 
him,  assumed. 

The  phases  of  St.  Paul's  character  which  had 
most  to  do  with  making  him  a  Christian  and  in 
shaping  his  Christian  message  were  his  Rabbinism 
and  his  mysticism.  His  Rabbinism  was  misunder- 
stood by  Augustine  and  other  theologians,  and  was 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  2O, 

mistaken  for  his  real  message,  whereas  it  was  not 
the  message  but  only  its  husk. 

We  shall  find  how  the  two  intermingled  in  his 
mind,  if  we  trace  first  the  mental  processes  of  his 
conversion,  and  then  something  of  the  growth  of  his 
thought  as  a  Christian. 

The  key  to  St.  Paul's  conversion  is  found  in 
Gal.  iii.  13:  "Christ  redeemed  us  from  the  curse  of 
the  law,  having  become  a  curse  for  us;  as  it  is 
written,  'Cursed  is  every  one  that  hangeth  on  a 
tree.' "  "As  it  is  written"  is  a  phrase  by  which  the 
Old  Testament  is  quoted.  If  we  turn  back  to  the  Old 
Testament  we  find  that  Paul  has  quoted  Deut.  xxi. 
22,  23,  a  passage  which  provides  that  a  man  who  is 
hanged  shall  be  taken  down  before  nightfall.  The 
reason  given  for  this  is,  "For  he  that  is  hanged  is  ac- 
cursed of  God ;  that  thou  defile  not  thy  land."  The 
point  of  this  Deuteronomic  law  is  just  this:  God's 
curse  rests  upon  every  man  who  is  hanged;  that 
curse  is  contagious,  and  the  land  must  not  be  exposed 
to  its  contagion  during  the  night,  or  it  will  be  infected 
thereby.  This  is  a  primitive  and,  if  you  please,  a 
half-superstitious  point  of  view ;  but  even  so  I  could 
prove,  if  time  permitted,  that  it  was  held  by  both 
Jews  and  Christians  until  after  the  time  of  Paul. 


3O          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Stated  in  a  different  way  this  view  of  the  law 
seems  more  reasonable.  All  the  law  is  from  God; 
it  is  accordingly  all  sacred  and  all  equally  binding. 
To  make  a  distinction  between  the  ritualistic  and 
the  moral  laws  would  be  rationalism — it  would  be 
to  intrude  the  human  judgment  into  a  region  into 
which  it  has  no  right  to  enter. 

This  was  the  point  of  view  of  Paul.  The  Jews 
who  became  Christians  before  him  were  less  logical 
than  he ;  but  to  his  mind  the  law's  curse  rested  upon 
Jesus  because  he  had  been  crucified,  or  hanged  on  a 
tree.  As  he  saw  Christians  multiplying,  and  in- 
creasingly large  numbers  of  Jews  swept  into  the 
Church,  it  appeared  to  him  that  the  contagion  of 
the  curse  of  a  hanged  man,  which  the  law  feared 
might  spread  over  the  land,  was  actually  spreading 
among  the  people.  For  this  reason  he  exerted  all 
his  force  of  character,  influence,  and  industry,  to 
stamp  out  the  curse. 

Meantime  another  influence  was  at  work  in  Paul's 
life  which  made  him  dissatisfied  with  the  law  at  the 
very  moment  when  he  so  strenuously  sought  to 
serve  it.  There  was  one  law  in  the  Decalogue 
which  Paul  could  not  keep.  It  was  the  command, 
"Thou  shalt  not  covet."  The  external  commands 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  3! 

he  could  fulfil,  but  the  wanderings  of  desire  he 
could  not  control.  Now  Paul  was  a  most  earnest 
man.  He  was  thorough  in  all  his  thought,  and  not 
one  to  consciously  tolerate  a  sham.  The  struggle 
which  this  failure  to  keep  the  command  against 
coveting  cost  him  is  vividly  portrayed  in  the  seventh 
chapter  of  Romans. 

Intensely  zealous  for  the  extermination  of  the 
Christians  in  order  to  vindicate  the  law,  and  crying 
out  inwardly,  "Oh  wretched  man  that  I  am !  Who 
shall  deliver  me  out  of  the  body  of  this  death?" 
because  the  law  failed  to  satisfy  his  inner  nature, 
Saul  of  Tarsus  approached  Damascus.  Before  he 
reached  the  city  Christ  appeared  to  him  in  that 
memorable  vision — a  vision  which  convinced  him 
that  Jesus  was  risen  from  the  dead.  This  vision 
changed  his  whole  life. 

Why  Paul's  life  was  changed  by  this  vision  we  can 
now  understand,  thanks  to  the  research  of  recent 
years.  In  common  with  other  ancient  peoples — 
Babylonians,  Egyptians,  Greeks,  and  Romans — the 
Hebrews  believed  that  all  the  dead  went  down  to  a 
cavern  under  the  earth.  They  called  this  "Sheol" 
(see  Isaiah  xiv.  9,  Ezekiel  xxxii.  21-31).  In  the 
earlier  times  the  Hebrews  had  believed  in  no  resur- 


32         THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

rection,  but  by  the  time  of  Paul  a  section  of  them, 
including  the  Pharisees,  to  which  party  Paul  be- 
longed, looked  forward  to  a  resurrection  at  a  great 
day  of  judgment  which  was  impending  at  some 
time  in  the  future.  In  all  history  only  two  men 
had,  they  thought,  escaped  from  Sheol  in  advance 
of  this  resurrection  and  gone  direct  to  God.  These 
were  Enoch  and  Elijah.  Among  the  Greeks  and 
Babylonians,  when  mortals  escaped  the  under- 
world they  were  thought  to  become  gods.  To  the 
monotheistic  Hebrews  this  was  impossible;  but 
they  did  the  next  best  thing.  Enoch  was  made  an 
angel;  the  very  process  by  which  it  was  done  is 
described  to  us  in  one  of  the  apocalypses  (Sclav. 
Enoch,  xxii.).  Elijah  meantime  had  become  a 
kind  of  heavenly  patron  saint,  whose  revelations 
and  mediation  accomplished  the  most  marvellous 
wonders  (cf.  Jewish  Encyclopedia,  vol.  v.  I24.fi.). 

When,  therefore,  Paul's  vision  convinced  him  that 
God  had  honoured  Jesus  as  He  had  honoured  Enoch 
and  Elijah,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  curse  of  the 
law  rested  upon  Him  in  consequence  of  His  cruci- 
fixion, his  whole  education  had  prepared  him  as 
naturally  for  the  revulsion  which  followed  as  it  had 
prepared  him  to  be  a  persecutor.  God  could  not 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  33 

have  honoured  one  whose  life  had  been  a  lie ;  there- 
fore Jesus  must  be  the  Messiah,  as  He  had  claimed. 
The  Messiah  was  a  heavenly  being  closely  associated 
with  God  (Eth.  Enoch,  48-51)  ;  Jesus  must  accord- 
ingly be  such  a  being.  This  was  to  him  proof  that 
Jesus  was  Divine  (Rom.  i.  4).  Paul  therefore 
became  an  ardent  disciple  of  Him  whom  he  had  just 
now  persecuted.  This  had  a  remarkable  effect  upon 
his  inner  life,  the  results  of  which  we  shall  trace  in  a 
few  moments. 

This  vision  of  Paul's,  which  had  convinced  him  of 
the  Messiahship  of  Jesus,  had  also  a  revolutionary 
effect  upon  his  estimate  of  the  Jewish  law.  That 
law  had  pronounced  Jesus  accursed  because  of  His 
crucifixion;  God,  on  the  other  hand,  had  honoured 
Jesus  as  in  all  the  history  of  the  world  he  had 
honoured  only  Enoch  and  Elijah,  and  by  so  honour- 
ing Him  had  vindicated  the  Messianic  claim  of  Jesus 
and  His  righteousness.  The  law  could  not  there- 
fore be,  as  Paul  had  thought,  of  universal  applica- 
tion. There  must  be  a  region — the  region  in  which 
Jesus  dwelt — in  which  it  was  not  in  force.  As  Paul 
had  previously  reasoned  that  Christians  shared  the 
curse  of  the  crucified,  so  now  he  reasoned  that  they 
shared  with  Jesus  his  exemption  from  the  law,  and 
3 


34          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

shared  also  His  righteousness.  It  was  because  of 
this  line  of  thought  that  Paul  could  say,  "I  through 
the  law  died  to  the  law  that  I  might  live  unto  God" 
(Gal.  ii.  19).  It  was  possible  for  a  man  to  be  justi- 
fied now — i.  e.,  pronounced  righteous — apart  from 
the  works  of  the  law.  God  had  revealed  "a  right- 
eousness apart  from  the  law"  (Rom.  iii.  21).  It 
was  in  this  way  that  Paul  saw  that  when  a  Jew 
became  a  Christian  he  need  no  longer  keep  the  Jew- 
ish law.  Similarly,  he  saw  that  if  a  Gentile  became 
a  Christian,  he  too  could  find  access  to  God,  apart 
from  the  law.  To  the  Pharisee  it  was  impossible 
for  a  Gentile  to  approach  God  without  becoming  a 
proselyte  and  keeping  the  law.  The  law  was  to  the 
Pharisee  the  one  avenue  of  approach  to  God,  and 
through  it  both  Jew  and  Gentile  must  walk,  if  they 
would  come  near  to  Him.  Paul  now  saw  a  path  of 
approach  to  God  for  the  Gentiles  apart  from  the 
law,  if  Gentiles  identified  themselves  with  Jesus. 
Gentiles  even  could  share  the  favour  God  bestowed 
on  Jesus,  in  spite  of  the  curse  of  the  law.  The  bond 
written  in  ordinances — that  is,  the  requirements  of 
the  Jewish  law — which  was  contrary  to  us — which 
was  a  middle  wall  of  partition  between  Jew  and 
Gentile — Jesus  has  taken  out  of  the  way,  Paul 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  35 

declares,  nailing  it  to  His  cross  (Col.  ii.  13,  14).  It 
was  thus  that  Paul  obtained  his  Gospel  for  the  Gen- 
tiles, and  became  the  Apostle  to  the  Gentiles.  It 
was  for  this  reason  that  go  where  he  would,  let  him 
but  preach  to  the  Jews  and  sooner  or  later  a  mob 
drove  him  away.  His  message  was  subversive  of 
fundamental  Jewish  institutions. 

We  have  thus  briefly  traced  from  Paul's  Rabbini- 
cal training  the  rise  of  his  Rabbinical  philosophy.1 
It  was  to  him  as  real  as  the  doctrine  of  decrees  to  a 
Calvinist,  or  the  doctrine  of  evolution  to  a  thinker 
of  the  present  day.  It  was  the  Jewish  philosophy 
of  the  time,  and  it  could  but  have  a  fundamental 
influence  upon  him.  It  is,  as  I  shall  show  in  a 
moment,  but  half  his  thought,  or  not  even  that.  It 
made  him  a  persecutor,  however ;  it  helped  to  make 
him  a  Christian;  it  made  him  the  Apostle  to  the 
Gentiles. 

When  Paul  speaks  of  the  death  of  Christ  he  has, 
except  in  a  few  rare  instances,  this  philosophy  in 
mind.  Christ  died  but  once,  and  that  was  on  the 
cross;  His  blood  was  shed  but  once,  and  that  was 
on  the  cross.  Whether  he  speaks  of  the  death  of 

1  For  fuller  statements,  see  C.  C.  Everett's  Gospel  of  Paul, 
Houghton  Mifflin,  1903,  and  the  writer's  "Spiritual  Develop- 
ment of  Paul"  in  the  Neva  World,  viii.  pp.  111-124. 


36         THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Christ,  the  shedding  of  the  blood  of  Christ,  or  the 
crucifixion  of  Christ,  he  always  has  this  Rabbinic 
sort  of  a  philosophy  in  mind.  Men  ignorant  of  this 
philosophy  have  thought  they  found  in  Paul  a  doc- 
trine of  vicarious  substitution,  and  have  proclaimed 
this  as  the  heart  of  Paul's  Christian  message.  In 
reality  the  doctrine  of  vicarious  substitution  is  as 
foreign  to  Paul  as  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is.  The 
Rabbinic  philosophy  which  has  been  mistaken  for 
substitution  is  not  even  the  heart  of  Paul's  message. 
It  was  only  the  axe  which  cleared  away  the  forests 
of  Jewish  particularism,  that  the  seed  of  the  king- 
dom might  find  a  lodgment. 

The  real  gospel  of  Paul — his  powerful  conception 
of  the  Christian  message  which  enabled  him  to  do 
his  work — was  his  doctrine  of  the  mystic  union  of 
Christ  and  the  believer.  Indeed  with  Paul  this  was 
more  than  a  doctrine;  it  was  a  living  experience. 
The  recognition  of  this  brings  us  to  another  aspect 
of  Paul's  vision  near  Damascus.  We  have  traced 
its  influence  on  his  thought,  but  it  had  also  a  crea- 
tive effect  on  his  heart-life. 

We  know  that  this  is  true  from  the  way  in  which 
Paul  always  referred  to  this  experience.  He  speaks 
of  it  in  Gal.  i.  16  as  God  revealing  his  Son  in  me. 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  37 

In  Rom.  vii.  and  viii.  he  contrasts  the  old  life  tinder 
the  law  with  the  fact  that  "the  law  of  the  Spirit  of 
life  in  Christ  Jesus  hath  made  me  free  from  the  law 
of  sin  and  death."  In  Gal.  ii.  20  he  declares  "It  is 
no  longer  I  that  live,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me." 

In  this  experience  Paul's  thirst  for  righteousness 
found  satisfaction.  The  control  of  his  desires  which 
he  was  unable  to  accomplish  alone,  and  which  made 
him  cry  out  so  pathetically,  "Who  shall  deliver  me 
out  of  the  body  of  this  death?"  was  now  accom- 
plished by  union  with  the  indwelling  Christ,  so  that 
he  could  sing,  "There  is  therefore  now  no  condem- 
nation to  those  who  are  in  Christ  Jesus,  who  walk 
not  after  the  flesh,  but  after  the  Spirit."  This 
mystic  union  with  Christ,  which  had  given  his  own 
life  such  emancipation,  such  poise  and  power,  was 
the  heart  of  his  Christian  message. 

Before  endeavouring  to  study  in  detail  Paul's 
doctrine  of  union  with  Christ,  let  us  glance  at  his 
conception  of  Christ  Himself.  His  doctrine  of 
Christ  was  not  a  fixed  quantity,  but  came  to  matu- 
rity through  development  It  is  a  progressive,  not 
a  static  doctrine. 

We  have  already  noted  how  at  his  conversion 
Paul  accepted  Jesus  as  the  Messiah.  From  the 


38          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

background  of  his  thought  which  we  gather  from 
Jewish  apocalypses,  we  know  that  he,  from  that 
moment,  regarded  Christ  as  a  heavenly  being  closely 
associated  with  God.  When  Paul  wrote  his  Thessa- 
lonian  letters  fifteen  to  twenty  years  later,  his 
thought  of  Christ,  in  so  far  at  least  as  it  is  revealed 
in  what  he  says,  had  not  progressed  beyond  this 
point. 

Christ  is  the  Son  of  God  ( I  Thess.  i.  10 ;  I  Thess. 
ii.  i),  and  is  associated  with  the  Father  in  the 
administration  of  Divine  Providence  (i  Thess.  iii. 
n).  Whether  this  is  a  position  higher  than  that 
ascribed  to  the  Messiah  in  pre-Christian  apocalypses 
is  disputed.  Possibly  it  is  slightly  in  advance  of 
contemporary  Jewish  positions.  But  the  role  as- 
signed to  the  Messiah  in  these  epistles  is  thoroughly 
Jewish,  as  is  the  whole  conception  of  the  world  and 
its  fortunes.  Sheol  is  a  cavern  under  the  earth; 
the  dead  are  sleeping  there,  awaiting  a  general  resur- 
rection which  will  take  place  when  Christ  descends 
from  heaven  (i  Thess.  iv.  13-18).  Christ  has 
ascended  to  heaven,  but  it  is  the  chief  business  of 
the  believer  to  await  His  return  ( i  Thess.  i.  9,  10) . 
When  He  comes  He  will  destroy  the  wicked  by  the 
breath  of  His  mouth  (2  Thess.  ii.  8) .  The  whole  of 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  39 

the  religious  philosophy  revealed  in  these  two 
epistles  is  Jewish.  Paul  differed  from  the  Jews  at 
this  period  only  in  his  belief  that  Jesus  was  the 
Messiah,  and  that  His  crucifixion  had  for  the  Chris- 
tian abolished  the  law.  In  his  next  great  group  of 
epistles,  written  in  the  years  55-58,  he  was  passing 
through  great  struggles.  He  had,  too,  been  for  a 
longer  time  employed  in  the  endeavour  to  extend 
Christianity  to  the  world  in  which  Greek  ideas 
reigned.  Both  these  facts  helped,  no  doubt,  to 
work  changes  in  his  thought. 

Christ  is  now  to  him  more  than  the  Messiah;  he 
is  the  "image  of  God"  (2  Cor.  iv.  4),  "wisdom  from 
God"  (i  Cor.  i.  30),  the  mirror  in  which  we  with 
unveiled  face  see  God  reflected  (2  Cor.  iii.  18).  He 
is  also  the  perfect  or  typical  man,  the  norm  of  the 
redeemed  race  (Rom.  v.  12-21;  i  Cor.  xv.  45-49). 
As  his  conception  of  Christ  becomes  in  these 
epistles  more  spiritual  and  vital,  his  Jewish  concep- 
tions of  death  and  the  last  things  fade  from  his 
mind.  Thus  it  happens  that  we  find  him  in  2  Cor. 
v.  emancipated  from  the  Jewish  conception  of  the 
long  sleep  in  Sheol  which  he  had  held  when  he  wrote 
to  the  Thessalonians.  He  here  conceives  the  alter- 
native to  "being  in  the  body"  "departing  to  be  with 


4O          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Christ."  The  necessity  of  waiting-  for  Christ  to 
descend  from  heaven  he  no  longer  believes;  the 
believer  goes  to  be  with  Christ  instead.  Some 
scholars  have,  it  is  true,  doubted  the  reality  of  this 
change  of  thought,  because  Paul,  like  others  who 
reach  important  and  epoch-making  changes  com- 
paratively late  in  life,  never  altogether  adjusted  his 
vocabulary  to  the  change.  Of  the  change  itself,  it 
seems  to  me,  however,  there  can  be  no  doubt. 

In  his  third  group  of  epistles — those  written  dur- 
ing the  Roman  captivity — we  find  Paul's  ripest 
thought.  Under  the  pressure  of  incipient  Gnostic 
thought  he  had  undergone  still  further  development. 
Christ  was  now  to  him  not  the  localized  Jewish 
Messiah,  but  the  world-Spirit,  the  world-Soul,  the 
embodiment  of  the  creative  energy  of  God  by  which 
the  world  was  created  and  by  which  it  is  held  to- 
gether (Col.  i.  13-17),  the  embodiment  in  flesh  of 
the  Divine  image  and  energy  (Phil.  ii.  6-n).  He 
here  anticipated  in  principle  many  features  of  the 
Logos-doctrine  of  the  Gospel  of  John. 

Christ  as  the  world-Soul — the  vitalizing  energy 
which  holds  the  world  together — is  quite  a  different 
conception  from  the  localized  and  anthropomorphic 
Jewish  Messiah.  For  such  a  Christ  to  need  to  come 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  4! 

from  a  distant  heaven  would  be  a  contradiction  in 
terms.  Could  this  development  in  Paul's  thought 
from  the  Jewish  to  the  cosmic  Christ  have  been 
appreciated,  how  many  Second  Adventist  vagaries 
the  Church  might  have  been  spared! 

It  is  no  accident  that  Paul's  expressions  about 
union  with  Christ  are  found  in  his  second  and  third 
groups  of  epistles,  for  it  is  in  these  groups  that  he 
reveals  his  conception  of  the  spiritual  and  cosmic 
Christ.  A  mystic  union  with  a  spiritual  Christ  was 
now  possible,  such  as  was  at  least  difficult  with  a 
Jewish  Messiah  who  had  withdrawn  to  the  distant 
heavens. 

The  first  thing  we  notice  in  connection  with 
Paul's  mysticism  is  that  it  affords  a  counterpart  in 
experience  to  the  Rabbinical  outline  of  the  Apostle's 
thought  which  we  have  already  traced.  The  death 
on  the  cross  by  which  Christ  had  incurred  the  curse 
of  the  law,  and  the  resurrection  by  which  God  had 
proved  that  He  honoured  Christ  in  spite  of  the 
curse  of  the  law,  as  we  have  seen,  emancipated  all 
who  identified  themselves  with  Christ  from  the 
demands  of  the  Old  Testament  law,  according  to 
Paul's  view,  but  its  effect  did  not  end  there.  It 
afforded  a  parallel  to  the  inner  experience  of  the 


42          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Christian.  As  Christ  was  crucified,  so  the  Chris- 
tian must  be  crucified  to  sin.  As  Christ  went  down 
into  death,  so  must  the  believer  die  to  his  old  self. 
As  Christ  was  raised  to  a  life  of  glory  with  God — 
a  life  superior  to  all  the  limitations  of  his  earthly 
career — so  the  Christian  is  raised  to  a  new  life.  All 
this  Paul  believed  went  on  in  the  soul  of  the  be- 
liever here  and  now.  It  was  not  a  felicity  for  which 
one  must  wait  till  the  gates  of  death  are  passed. 
Thus,  in  writing  to  the  Romans  he  says  (vi.  3-11), 
"Are  ye  ignorant  that  all  who  were  baptized  into 
Christ  Jesus  were  baptized  into  His  death?  We 
were  buried,  therefore,  with  him  through  baptism 
into  death;  that  like  as  Christ  was  raised  from  the 
dead  through  the  glory  of  the  Father,  so  we  also 
might  walk  in  newness  of  life.  For  if  we  have 
become  united  to  Him  in  the  likeness  of  His  death, 
we  shall  be  also  in  the  likeness  of  His  resurrection; 
knowing  this  that  our  old  man  was  crucified  with 
Him,  that  the  body  of  sin  might  be  done  away,  that 
so  we  should  no  longer  be  in  bondage  to  sin;  for 
he  that  hath  died  is  justified  from  sin.  But  if  we 
died  with  Christ,  we  believe  that  we  shall  also  live 
with  Him;  knowing  that  Christ  being  raised  from 
the  dead  dieth  no  more ;  death  hath  no  more  domin- 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  43 

ion  over  Him.  For  the  death  that  He  died  He  died 
unto  sin  once :  but  the  life  that  he  liveth,  he  liveth 
unto  God.  Even  so  reckon  ye  also  yourselves  to  be 
dead  indeed  unto  sin,  but  alive  unto  God  in  Christ 
Jesus." 

The  analogy  between  the  death  and  resurrection 
of  Christ  and  the  inner  experiences  of  the  Christian 
which  is  here  drawn  out  at  such  length,  had  been 
more  briefly  expressed  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Gala- 
tians  as  the  apostle's  own  experience.  He  says 
(ii.  20),  "I  have  been  crucified  with  Christ,  and  it 
is  no  longer  I  that  live,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me :  and 
that  life  which  I  now  live  in  the  flesh  I  live  in  faith, 
the  faith  which  is  in  the  Son  of  God,  who  loved  me 
and  gave  Himself  up  for  me." 

It  is  clear  then  that  Paul  believed  that  the  death 
and  resurrection  of  Christ  were  mystically  lived 
over  in  inner  experience  by  every  Christian.  It 
was  this  which  made  him  a  Christian.  The  pas- 
sage from  Galatians  just  quoted  carries  us,  however, 
a  step  further  into  Paul's  mystical  conception,  for  it 
makes  it  clear  that  he  believed  that  Christ  Himself 
actually  lived  in  one  who  had  died  to  sin  and  entered 
into  this  resurrection  life.  "It  is  no  longer  I  that 
live,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me,"  implies  complete  union 


44          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

with  Christ,  so  that  what  I  do  Christ  does;  what  I 
suffer  He  suffers ;  my  triumphs  are  His  triumphs. 

Of  similar  meaning  are  the  following  passages: 
"As  many  of  you  as  were  baptized  into  Christ  did 
put  on  Christ"  (Gal.  iii.  27)  ;  "My  little  children, 
of  whom  I  am  again  in  travail  until  Christ  be  formed 
in  you"  (Gal.  iv.  19)  ;  "There  is  no  condemnation 
to  them  that  are  in  Christ  Jesus"  (Rom.  viii.  i)  ; 
"In  whom  ye  also  are  builded  together  for  a  habita- 
tion of  God  in  the  Spirit"  (Eph.  ii.  22)  ;  "That 
Christ  may  dwell  in  your  hearts  by  faith,  to  the  end 
that  ye  being  rooted  and  grounded  in  love,  may  be 
strong  to  apprehend  with  all  saints  what  is  the 
breadth,  and  length,  and  height,  and  depth,  and  to 
know  the  love  of  Christ  which  passeth  knowledge, 
that  ye  may  be  filled  unto  all  the  fulness  of  God" 
(Eph.  iii.  17-19)  ;  "God  was  pleased  to  make  known 
the  riches  of  His  glory  among  the  Gentiles,  which 
is  Christ  in  you,  the  hope  of  glory"  (Col.  i.  27)  ; 
"For  ye  died  that  your  life  might  be  hid  with  Christ 
in  God"  (Col.  iii.  3). 

That  Paul  believed  in  a  real  union  of  the  believer 
with  Christ  there  can  be  no  doubt.  His  conviction 
is  expressed  in  accordance  with  his  habit  in  many 
ways  and  with  great  variety  of  metaphor.  At  times 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  45 

Christ  is  in  the  believer,  and  at  times  the  believer  is 
in  Christ.  At  times  the  believer  lives  by  faith,  and 
at  times  he  does  not  live  at  all,  but  only  Christ  lives 
in  him.  But,  however  he  expresses  it,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  of  his  meaning. 

The  result  of  this  union  is  that  the  Christian  is 
no  longer  fleshly  but  spiritual;  he  leads  no  longer 
an  earthly  but  a  heavenly  life.  This  is  the  meaning 
of  such  utterances  as  the  following: — "The  law  of 
the  Spirit  of  life  in  Christ  Jesus  hath  made  me  free 
from  the  law  of  sin  and  death"  (Rom.  viii.  2)  ; 
"The  fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  love,  joy,  peace,  long- 
suffering,  kindness,  goodness,  faithfulness,  meek- 
ness, self-control;  against  such  there  is  no  law. 
And  they  that  are  of  Christ  Jesus  have  crucified  the 
flesh  with  the  passions  and  lusts  thereof"  (Gal.  v. 
22-24)  5  "For  we  are  His  workmanship,  created  in 
Christ  Jesus  for  good  works"  (Ephes.  ii.  10)  ;  "The 
fruit  of  the  light  is  in  all  goodness  and  righteous- 
ness and  truth"  (Ephes.  v.  9)  ;  "It  is  God  who 
worketh  in  you  both  to  will  and  to  work  for  His 
good  pleasure"  (Phil.  ii.  13)  ;  "We  all  with  unveiled 
face  beholding  as  in  a  mirror  the  glory  of  the  Lord 
are  transformed  into  the  same  image  from  glory  to 
glory"  (2  Cor.  iii.  18). 


46          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Again,  this  spiritual  and  perfectly  ethical  life 
made  the  Christian,  so  Paul  believed,  absolutely  free. 
No  law  of  any  sort  longer  had  dominion  over  him. 
A  man  so  divine,  so  united  to  Christ,  was  in  the 
possession  of  the  completest  ethical  liberty,  because, 
being  spiritual  and  divine,  his  nature  is  its  own  law 
and  needs  no  other.  "Where  the  Spirit  of  the 
Lord  is,  there  is  liberty,"  Paul  exclaims  (2  Cor. 
iii.  17).  This  is  also  shown  in  his  treatment  in 
I  Corinthians  of  a  case  of  social  immorality.  The 
easy  way  would  have  been  to  say,  "this  is  contrary 
to  the  moral  law — to  the  Pentateuch."  Paul,  how- 
ever, does  not  take  the  easy  way.  He  is  true  to  his 
principles,  declaring,  "All  things  are  lawful  for  me, 
but  all  things  are  not  expedient.  All  things  are 
lawful,  but  I  will  not  be  brought  under  the  power 
of  any"  ( I  Cor.  vi.  12) .  He  flees  from  fornication, 
not  because  it  violates  a  Decalogue,  but  because  it 
destroys  his  Christian  liberty  by  bringing  him  under 
the  power  of  a  harmful  habit.  If  the  Christian  lives 
according  to  his  own  inner  nature,  he  cannot  pursue 
a  course  of  sin  which  would  destroy  that  nature. 
In  this  very  connection  he  asserts  again  the  real 
union  of  the  Christian  with  Christ,  declaring  "He 
that  is  joined  unto  the  Lord  is  one  spirit"  (v.  17). 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  47 

What  a  noble  conception  of  a  Christian  life !  How 
different  a  world  it  would  be  if  Christians  had 
enough  of  the  Divine  Spirit  to  live  the  ideal  life,  not 
because  of  external  rules,  but  because  of  the  com- 
pulsion of  their  inner  beings! 

This  ideal  life,  in  Paul's  view,  made  one  a  sharer 
of  Christ's  work  and  Christ's  sufferings.  A  part  of 
the  mystic  experience  was,  as  Paul  conceived  it, 
"To  know  Him,  and  the  power  of  His  resurrection, 
and  the  fellowship  of  His  sufferings"  (Phil.  iii.  10). 
This  desire  to  enter  into  fellowship  with  the  suffer- 
ings of  Christ  was  on  the  part  of  the  great  Apostle 
no  morbid  brooding  over  the  death  of  Jesus,  nor  an 
ascetic  mortification  of  the  body  because  its  death 
would  be  an  end  in  itself;  it  was  rather  a  desire  to 
complete  the  work  which  Christ's  sufferings  had 
begun,  for  in  Col.  i.  24  he  says,  "Now  I  rejoice  in 
my  sufferings  for  your  sake,  and  fill  up  on  my  part 
that  which  is  lacking  of  the  afflictions  of  Christ  in 
my  flesh  for  His  body's  sake,  which  is  the  Church." 
Fellowship  with  Christ's  sufferings  meant  that 
Christ's  work  could  in  that  way  be  made  effective 
to  more  of  those  whom  Christ  would  win.  It  was 
an  expression  of  this  same  thought  when  Paul  wrote, 
"I  am  a  debtor  both  to  Greeks  and  to  Barbarians, 


48          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

both  to  the  wise  and  to  the  foolish.  So  as  much  as 
in  me  is,  I  am  ready  to  preach  the  gospel  to  you 
also  that  are  in  Rome"  (Rom.  i.  14,  15).  Again,  in 
writing  to  the  Corinthians  (i  Cor.  ix.  16),  he  says, 
"Necessity  is  laid  upon  me;  for  woe  is  me  if  I 
preach  not  the  gospel."1 

The  living  out  of  this  Divine  life  which  made  one 
free  from  the  law  would,  if  the  inner  impulse  found 
real  expression,  lead  to  participation  in  the  work  of 
Christ — to  active  labour  for  the  spread  of  His  King- 
dom. The  mysticism  of  Paul  was  of  a  thoroughly 
healthy  type.  It  meant  no  impractical  absorption 
into  the  ineffable,  but  inspiration  for  the  most  self- 
sacrificing  toil. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Paul  believed  in  a 
real  union  of  the  believer  with  Christ — a  union 
which  made  the  believer's  life  a  divine  life.  And 
yet  he  never  went  to  the  extreme  of  some  modern 
fanatics  and  lost  his  Christian  modesty.  He  speaks 
of  Christians  as  perfect,  it  is  true — "Let  us,  there- 
fore, as  many  as  are  perfect,  be  thus  minded"  (Phil, 
iii.  15),  meaning  by  the  expression  that  they  have  all 

1The  author  desires  to  acknowledge  his  indebtedness  to  an 
article  by  Professor  McGiffert  on  "Mysticism  in  the  Early 
Church,"  in  the  American  Journal  of  Theology,  vol.  xi.  pp. 
407-427. 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  49 

the  elements  of  life  now  that  this  Divine  element 
is  present  in  them,  but  in  the  same  connection  he 
makes  it  clear  that,  though  he  had  been  a  Christian  ' 
for  many  years,  he  found  the  life  with  Christ  so  • 
infinite  that  he  had  not  grasped  it  all.  The  goal  had 
been  in  part  experienced,  but  it  was  a  flying  goal. 
Thus  he  says  (Phil.  iii.  8  ff.),  "Yea,  verily,  and  I 
count  all  things  to  be  loss  for  the  excellency  of  the 
knowledge  of  Christ  Jesus  my  Lord:  for  whom  I 
suffer  the  loss  of  all  things,  and  do  count  them  but 
refuse  that  I  may  gain  Christ,  and  be  found  in  Him, 
not  having  a  righteousness  of  mine  own,  even  that 
which  is  of  the  law,  but  that  which  is  through  faith 
in  Christ,  the  righteousness  which  is  from  God  by 
faith :  that  I  may  know  him  and  the  power  of  His 
resurrection,  and  the  fellowship  of  His  sufferings, 
becoming  conformed  unto  His  death;  if  by  any 
means  I  might  attain  unto  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead.  Not  that  I  have  already  obtained,  or  am 
made  perfect:  but  I  press  on,  if  so  be  that  I  may 
lay  hold  of  that  for  which  also  I  was  laid  hold  on  by 
Christ  Jesus.  Brethren,  I  count  not  myself  yet  to 
have  laid  hold:  but  this  one  thing  I  do,  forgetting 
the  things  which  are  behind,  and  stretching  forward 
to  the  things  which  are  before,  I  press  on  toward 
4 


5O          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

the  goal  unto  the  prize  of  the  high  calling  of  God  in 
Christ  Jesus." 

If  then  the  thoroughgoing  mysticism  of  Paul  at 
times  almost  takes  our  breath  away,  we  must  admit 
that  it  is  a  thoroughly  practical  and  sane  mysticism. 
While  he  taught  the  identification  of  the  believer 
with  Christ  until  the  two  were  one,  he  taught  also 
that  it  was  an  identity  effected  for  service  and 
through  service,  and  held  it  in  such  sanity  as  to 
keep  the  believer  humbled  with  a  sense  of  his  own 
incompleteness  in  comparison  with  the  infinite  per- 
fectness  of  God. 

In  brief,  then,  the  Christian  message  as  it  was 
conceived  by  Paul  presented  a  twofold  aspect.  It 
declared  to  the  Jew  that  if  he  would  but  unite 
himself  to  Christ,  all  the  onerous  burdens  of  the 
ritual  law  were  abolished.  It  declared  to  the  Gen- 
tile that  on  similar  conditions  all  ritual  was  abol- 
ished for  him.  These  conclusions  were  reached  by 
Paul  and  were  advocated  through  the  agency  of  a 
Rabbinic  reasoning,  which,  while  thoroughly  in 
harmony  with  the  Judaism  of  the  period,  is  mean- 
ingless now.  This  aspect  of  Paul's  message  was 
temporary.  It  was  incidental  to  the  period;  it 
served  to  give  his  message  a  hearing  at  the  time, 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  PAUL  51 

but  it  was  not  that  which  gave  his  message  its 
power.  The  heart  of  his  message — that  which 
brought  thousands  to  Christ  as  the  result  of  his 
labours — was  the  union  with  Christ,  the  escape 
from  sin,  the  entrance  into  the  Divine  life,  and  the 
joy,  not  only  of  living,  but  of  service,  which  that 
union  offered.  God  had  shown  Himself  in  Christ 
to  be  not  the  God  of  the  Jew  only,  but  of  all  the 
world.  Any  member  of  the  human  race  might  come 
into  real  and  vital  union  with  Him  in  Christ.  Dis- 
tinctions as  between  Jew  and  Gentile,  Greek  and 
Barbarian,  slave  or  free  man,  man  or  woman,  all 
disappeared.  All  were  welcome  through  Christ  to 
God;  and  all  were  dignified  by  being  given,  if  they 
accepted  the  welcome,  a  share  in  Christ's  life, 
Christ's  suffering,  Christ's  work,  Christ's  purity, 
Christ's  joy,  and  Christ's  glory.  Such  was  the 
Christian  message  on  the  lips  of  Paul. 

He  found  Christianity  a  Jewish  sect;  he  left  it  a 
universal  religion.  At  first  his  conception  of  it 
differed  from  that  of  the  other  Apostles  chiefly  in 
his  conception  of  the  abolition  of  the  law  by  the 
crucifixion  and  resurrection  of  Christ :  but  by  steady 
progress  of  thought,  brought  about  by  the  advance 
in  experience  of  Christ  while  labouring  in  the  multi- 


52          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

farious  conditions  of  a  polyglot  world  and  contend- 
ing with  the  eddies  and  whirlpools  of  the  world's 
many-sided  thought,  he  passed  from  the  conception 
of  Christ  as  the  Jewish  Messiah  to  Christ  as  the 
creative  world-Spirit,  who,  laying  aside  voluntarily 
His  glory  and  heavenly  dignity,  out  of  love  for  men 
humbled  Himself  to  the  death  on  the  cross.  Paul  in 
this  picture  of  Christ  anticipated  the  method  by 
which  the  Johannine  writer  adapted  the  Christian 
message  to  the  thinking  world  at  the  end  of  the 
century.  On  the  road  between  the  two  points  indi- 
cated he  had  cast  his  Jewish  notions  of  eschatology 
to  the  winds. 

To  no  person  in  history,  except  Christ  Himself, 
does  Christianity  owe  more  than  to  Paul. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   CHRISTIAN    MESSAGE   IN   THE  JOHANNINE 
WRITINGS 

FOR  our  present  purpose  we  shall  confine  our 
attention  to  the  Gospel  of  John  and  the  First  Epistle 
of  John.  Let  it  not  be  understood  that  by  so  doing 
we  undervalue  the  other  writings  which  are  con- 
nected with  the  name  of  John.  We  do  this  because 
the  Second  and  Third  Epistles  of  John  are  too 
personal  and  private  in  their  nature  to  illustrate  so 
well  the  great  principles  which  shine  forth  in  the 
Gospel  and  First  Epistle,  and  because  the  message 
of  the  Book  of  Revelation  is  too  manifold,  and  is 
involved  in  too  many  critical  questions,  even  if  it 
were  John's  (which  is  in  doubt),  to  be  presented  in 
one  lecture. 

The  Book  of  Revelation  belongs  to  the  class  of 
apocalypses  of  which  the  Jews  produced  many. 
Apocalypses  fulfilled  a  useful  purpose  in  times  of 
distress,  but  their  thought  was  clearly  transitory. 
The  primary  conception  of  Revelation,  that  the 

53 


54          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Second  Coming  of  Christ  is  to  occur  in  a  cataclysm, 
is  not  entertained  by  the  Gospel  of  John,  which 
regards  the  coming  of  the  Spirit  as  the  Second 
Coming  of  Christ  (chapters  xv.,  xvi.).  Present-day 
criticism  is  agreed  that  the  Book  of  Revelation  was 
in  part  compiled  from  Jewish  sources.1 

The  Gospel  and  First  Epistle  of  John  are,  how- 
ever, in  a  different  class.  It  is  the  unanimous 
verdict  of  scholars  that  they  are  the  work  of  the 
same  author.  Their  purpose  is  the  same.  Though 
the  circumstances  which  called  them  forth  may  have 
been  slightly  different,  the  message  of  the  one  is  in 
spirit  identical  with  that  of  the  other,  and  in  form 
the  complement  of  it. 

These  books  were  written,  either  in  the  last  decade 
of  the  first  century,  or  the  first  decade  of  the  second, 
in  Asia  Minor.  They  were  both  written  to  meet 
certain  phases  of  Gnosticism,  and  for  that  purpose 
they  present  the  Christian  message  in  a  form  adapted 
to  that  end. 

The  author  of  these  books  is  shrouded  in  mystery. 
There  are  still  able  scholars  who  hold  that  he  was 
John  the  son  of  Zebedee,  though  there  is  a  growing 

1  See  an  article  by  the  writer :  "The  Apocalypse  and  Recent 
Criticism,"  In  the  American  Journal  of  Theology,  vol.  ii.,  pp. 
776-801. 


MESSAGE   IN   THE  JOHANNINE   WRITINGS         55 

conviction  in  the  minds  of  many  scholars  that  the 
author  cannot  have  been  he.  In  one  important 
respect,  however,  scholars  are  coming  to  an  agree- 
ment: both  schools  admit  that  whoever  was  the 
author,  there  is  in  the  Gospel  an  ideal  element — 
that  things  did  not  always  happen  just  as  they  are 
portrayed  here,1  but  that  mingled  with  a  tradition 
of  our  Saviour  more  or  less  genuine  are  the  author's 
ideals  and  conceptions. 

This  point  needs,  perhaps,  a  little  illustration.  In 
the  Synoptic  Gospels  Jesus  does  not  announce  Him- 
self at  first  as  the  Messiah;  He  assumes  a  title 
which  we  can  see  had  a  Messianic  significance  (I 
mean  the  title  "Son  of  Man"),  but  which  the  dis- 
ciples did  not  recognize  as  such  until  the  ministry 
was  nearly  ended,  when  at  Caesarea  Philippi  he 
drew  forth  from  Peter  the  confession:  "Thou  art 
the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God."  In  other 
words,  the  first  three  Gospels  portray  a  historical 
development,  picturing  the  growth  of  the  Messianic 
consciousness  in  the  mind  of  Jesus  Himself,  show- 
ing how,  as  a  great  teacher,  He  attracted  the  notice, 
won  the  confidence,  and  gained  the  love  of  the 
disciples,  and  after  months  of  companionship  dis- 

1So  Sanday,  Criticism  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  pp.  179,  ff. 


56          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

closed  to  them  His  Messianic  consciousness  and 
Messianic  claim.  All  this  is  not  only  asserted  by 
our  earliest  Gospels,  but  is  in  accord  with  all  that  we 
know  of  the  psychological  development  of  the  soul, 
and  of  tactful,  pedagogical  method.  It  is  probably 
the  true  historical  picture. 

The  Gospel  of  John  presents  a  very  different  pic- 
ture. In  it  Jesus,  instead  of  announcing  His  Mes- 
siahship  to  a  select  few  after  months  of  preparation, 
makes  it  known  in  the  first  chapter  to  Nathaniel,  a 
comparative  stranger.  Instead  of  speaking  of  it 
quietly  to  a  few  disciples  in  retirement,  this  Gospel 
represents  Him  as  arguing  it  throughout  His  min- 
istry, often  publicly  and  in  the  spirit  of  a  dogmatic 
theologian,  with  the  Pharisees.  We  are  compelled 
to  confess  that  the  author  has  in  this  portrayal  lost 
the  historical  perspective  and  introduced  an  ideal 
element  of  his  own.  We  must  not,  however,  judge 
him  too  harshly  for  this.  Irenaeus  long  ago  told 
the  world  that  this  Gospel  was  written  .to  oppose 
the  errors  of  Cerinthus,  a  Gnostic  Jew,  who  held  a 
position  intermediate  between  the  Gnostics,  the  Jews, 
and  the  Christians.  Cerinthus  distinguished  the 
Maker  of  the  world  from  God,  and  held  peculiar 
notions  about  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus,  contending 


MESSAGE   IN   THE  JOHANNINE  WRITINGS        57 

that  it  began  at  the  time  of  His  baptism.  The  argu- 
ment of  the  Gospel  was  directed,  in  part  at  least, 
against  these  heresies.  The  author  declares  that 
his  purpose  in  writing  was  (xx.  31)  :  "That  ye  may 
believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  God; 
and  that  believing  ye  may  have  life  in  His  name," 
but  it  is  evident  that,  as  he  endeavoured  to  confirm 
faith,  he  also  tried  to  correct  error.  The  errors 
which  this  writer  sought  to  correct  were  in  reality 
largely  Gnostic.  Gnosticism  was  a  syncretistic  and 
eclectic  system  of  thought.  Its  most  fundamental 
conception — that  there  were  two  gods,  one  evil  and 
one  good,  and  that  the  evil  god  created  matter — 
was  of  Persian  origin,  though  slightly  modified. 
Gnosticism  also  contained  many  elements  from 
many  different  sources.  As  a  philosophy  it  was  an 
endeavour  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  world  and  of 
life;  as  embodied  in  organization  it  presented  a 
variety  of  schools  or  sects.  Gnosticism  represented 
the  world-thought  of  the  period.1 

In  his  endeavour  to  meet  this  world-thought  the 
writer  of  the  Gospel  was  led  to  give  an  interpreta- 
tion of  the  person  of  Christ,  to  lift  Him  out  of  His 
narrow  Jewish  environment,  and  to  estimate  His 

1  See  E.  F.  Scott,  The  Fourth  Gospel. 


58  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

racial  and  cosmic  significance.  It  is  this  part  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  which  constitutes  one  of  its  most 
valuable  features — a  feature  of  permanent  import- 
ance to  Christianity.  The  Gospel  of  Mark  had  pre- 
sented Christ  as  a  remarkable  teacher  amid  a  circle 
of  friends — a  wonder-worker  amid  the  sick  and  suf- 
fering. It  had  represented  God  as  shining  through 
this  man,  but  it  left  Jesus  as  a  local  figure  in  history, 
with  His  relations  to  the  world  beyond  the  bounds 
of  Judaism  almost  entirely  undefined.  The  Gospel 
of  John,  on  the  other  hand,  lifts  the  Saviour  out  of 
the  narrow  bounds  of  the  circle  of  Jewish  disciples 
and  enemies,  and  seeks  to  give  Him  His  proper 
perspective  in  relation  to  the  universe. 

This  endeavour  of  the  writer  of  the  Gospel  was 
not  the  first  of  the  kind.  Paul  had,  in  his  third 
group  of  Epistles,  notably  in  Philippians  and  Colos- 
sians,  begun  this  work  on  the  very  plan  which  this 
Gospel  follows.  In  this  Gospel,  however,  the  great 
thoughts  involved  are  expressed  with  a  simplicity 
and  a  beauty,  and,  in  accord  with  the  Hellenistic- 
Jewish  doctrines  of  the  time,  developed  to  a  logical 
completeness,  which  are  unique  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment. 

Let  us  see  what  the  message  of  this  Gospel  is  in 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  JOHANNINE   WRITINGS         59 

regard  to  Christ  We  are  all  familiar  with  its  open- 
ing words:  "In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and 
the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was  divine.1 
All  things  were  made  by  Him.  .  .  .  And  the  Word 
became  flesh  and  tabernacled  among  us,  and  we  be- 
held His  glory.  .  .  .  No  man  hath  ever  seen  God, 
the  only  begotten  Son,  who  is  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Father,  he  hath  interpreted  Him." 

It  is  perhaps  difficult  for  us  to  grasp  all  that  this 
evangelist  intended  to  denote  by  the  term  "Word." 
The  term  had  descended  through  two  long  lines  of 
ancestry,  the  one  Greek,  where  through  six  hundred 
years  of  history,  from  Heraclitus  to  John,  it  had 
played  a  prominent  part;  the  other  Hebrew,  where 
the  Divine  Word  had  often  been  so  personified  that 
it  could  at  times  be  represented  as  sent  on  missions 
by  itself.  Philo,  an  Alexandrian  Jewish  philosopher 
(20  B.C. — 40  A.D.),  had  fused  the  two,  making  the 
word  a  Divine  entity,  sometimes  almost  identical 
with  God  Himself.  Modifying  and  improving 
Philo's  conception,  this  evangelist  seems  to  use  the 
term  to  represent  God's  self-revealing  power.  That 
part  of  God's  nature  or  activity  by  which  He  made 

1  The  verse  does  not  say  the  Word  was  the  Absolute  God 
,  but  that  it  belonged  to  the  God-class  (&<>?). 


60         THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

the  world  and  created  all  living  things  (thus  reveal- 
ing His  skill  and  His  power)  became  incarnate,  he 
tells  us,  in  Jesus  Christ.  The  Divine-human  person- 
ality of  the  Saviour  thus  becomes  a  higher,  a  more 
articulate,  and  a  more  intelligible  revelation  of  God 
than  any  that  had  been  made  before. 

Whatever  we  may  be  compelled  to  think  about 
the  historical  perspective  of  the  Gospel  of  John,  and 
whatever  our  age,  or  succeeding  ages,  may  think  of 
the  Hellenistic  philosophy  which  moulded  its  ex- 
pressions, the  message  of  this  book  regarding 
Christ  can  never  be  out-dated.  In  that  matchless 
personality,  of  spotless  character,  possessing  a 
unique  consciousness  of  God's  fatherhood,  a  char- 
acter of  unparalleled  unselfishness  and  beneficence, 
and  a  power  which  the  death  of  the  body  enhanced 
rather  than  quenched,  men  from  age  to  age  turn 
for  their  highest  revelation  of  God.  By  whatever 
theory  we  may  explain  the  relation  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  to  the  preexistent  Son  of  God,  no  Chris- 
tianity long  retains  its  power  which  does  not  gain 
its  inspiration  from  the  central  thought  of  this 
Gospel — that  God  was  in  Christ,  that  God  through 
the  personality  of  Jesus  speaks  to  us  of  love,  of 
forgiveness,  of  hope,  of  power,  in  a  way  unique  in 


MESSAGE   IN    THE   JOHANNINE   WRITINGS         6l 

the  annals  of  human  history.  God  incarnate — the 
infinite  personality  interpreted  through  the  one  ideal 
man  whom  our  planet  has  known — such  is  Jesus 
Christ. 

The  effort  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  to  prove  the 
Messiahship  of  Jesus  is  a  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  the  coming  of  the  supreme  revelation  of  God 
constituted  the  culmination  of  a  long  process  of 
Jiistory.  It  did  not  drop  from  heaven  full-flowered, 
without  warning  or  preparation,  but  followed  those 
laws  of  Divine  development  so  abundantly  revealed 
in  the  world  about  us,  which  Jesus  in  His  parable 
so  happily  and  succinctly  characterized:  "First  the 
blade,  then  the  ear,  and  afterward  the  full  corn  in 
the  ear."  In  a  generation  such  as  ours,  this  recog- 
nition of  historic  connections  and  perspective  should 
be  appreciated. 

The  point  just  touched  upon  is  not  peculiar  to  the 
Gospel  of  John,  since  the  other  Gospels  also  insist 
upon  it  when  they  teach  that  Jesus  is  the  Messiah. 
In  its  conception  of  Messianic  work  the  Gospel  of 
John  is,  however,  unique.  According  to  the  Syn- 
optics the  glory  of  the  Messianic  work  is  to  be 
manifested  in  a  cataclysmic  coming  of  the  kingdom 
of  God,  when  the  Son  of  Man  shall  appear  on  the 


62         THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

clouds  of  heaven,  and  the  glory  of  God  shall  be 
revealed.  John,  on  the  other  hand,  conceives  the 
earthly  life  of  Jesus,  even  before  His  crucifixion,  to 
have  revealed  or  manifested  the  glory  of  God.  He 
tells  us  that  Jesus  said  in  His  great  prayer :  "I  have 
glorified  Thee  on  the  earth,  I  have  finished  the  work 
that  Thou  gavest  Me  to  do.  .  .  ."  And,  again :  "I 
have  manifested  Thy  name  to  the  men  whom  Thou 
gavest  Me  out  of  the  world;  Thine  they  were  and 
Thou  gavest  them  to  Me,  and  they  have  kept  Thy 
word."  It  is  true  that  in  the  view  of  this  evangelist 
miracles  were  "signs"  by  which  the  Messiah  mani- 
fested His  glory,  but  it  is  also  true  that  he  saw  in 
the  personality  of  Jesus,  with  its  spotless  purity,  its 
matchless  symmetry,  its  radiant  helpfulness  and 
unequalled  power,  a  revelation  of  God. 

In  this  thought  the  evangelist  caught  the  true 
point  of  view  of  his  Master:  glory  is  service;  true 
exaltation  is  found  in  living  nobly  the  common  life ; 
the  glory  of  God  is  manifested  in  character,  healing 
strength,  self-sacrifice  and  love. 

The  most  significant  thing  about  the  message 
of  this  Gospel  concerning  Christ  is,  however,  the 
fact  that  all  this  leads  up  to  the  message  of  the  Gos- 
pel concerning  God.  We  all  recall  the  touching 


MESSAGE  IN  THE  JOHANNINE  WRITINGS        63 

scene  portrayed  in  ch.  xiv.  The  disciples  are  sad 
because  Jesus  is  to  be  taken  from  them,  and  Philip, 
seeking  for  some  solace  to  the  general  sorrow, 
sighed  as  many  a  soul  in  its  sorrow  and  hunger  has 
sighed:  "Show  us  the  Father  and  it  sufficeth  us." 
The  answer  of  Jesus  is  most  memorable:  "Have  I 
been  so  long  time  with  you  and  yet  hast  thou  not 
known  Me,  Philip?  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath 
seen  the  Father;  how  sayest  thou,  Show  us  the 
Father?"  Here  we  are  specifically  taught  the 
Christ-likeness  of  God.  Would  we  know  what  God 


is  like,  look  at  Jesus  Christ.  No  part  of  the  Gospel 
message  is  more  simple,  more  sublime,  or  more 
fundamental  than  this. 

The  ethics  of  every  man  breathe  forth  his  con- 
ception of  God.  If,  like  the  ancient  Assyrians,  one 
believes  that  his  god  is  simply  one  among  many, 
and  that  his  god  is  striving  for  the  mastery,  a  man 
will  necessarily  hold  that  the  devotees  of  the  super- 
natural enemies  of  his  god  possess  no  rights  which 
he  is  bound  to  respect,  and  when  he  conquers  them 
will  have  no  hesitation  in  flaying  his  victims  alive, 
or  cutting  out  their  tongues.  If,  like  Cromwell,  his 
God  is  the  God  of  the  Book  of  Judges,  he  will  be 
hard,  ruthless  and  savage  in  his  treatment  of  ene- 


64          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

mies;  religion  will  consist  largely  of  creed  and  the 
winning  love  which  melts  the  heart  when  revealed 
through  kindly  deed  will  find  little  place.  If,  like 
the  author  of  Ecclesiastes,  one  thinks  of  God  as  an 
unfeeling,  inescapable,  all-powerful  Fate — one  who 
capriciously  rewards  the  evil  man  with  blessings 
and  the  good  man  with  misfortunes;  one  whose  pur- 
poses and  principles  of  action  we  cannot  hope  to 
understand;  one  must  either  commit  suicide,  or 
adopt  the  oft-repeated  strain  of  Qoheleth,  "There  is 
nothing  better  for  a  man  than  that  he  should  eat 
and  drink,  and  make  his  soul  enjoy  good  in  his 
labour.  .  .  .  This  is  vanity,"  i.  .,  this  quickly  passes 
away.  Make  the  most  of  the  little  chance  for  such 
comforts  as  this  life  affords,  and  they  are,  for  the 
most  part,  physical  comforts,  for  this  is  our  only 
chance — such  is  the  Gospel  of  Ecclesiastes.  Such  a 
gospel  springs  naturally  out  of  Qoheleth's  concep- 
tion of  God.  It  is  a  gospel  which  makes  of  man 
only  a  higher  animal.  He  may  be  a  beastly  and 
gluttonous,  or  a  learned  and  pedantic,  animal,  but 
he  is  still  only  an  animal. 

How  different  is  the  life  of  one  who  accepts  the 
message  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  hardly  needs  to  be 
portrayed.  God  is  like  Christ — not  a  blind,  unfeel- 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  JOHANNINE   WRITINGS        65 

ing,  inexorable,  incomprehensible  Fate,  but,  like 
Jesus,  loving,  gentle,  helpful,  self-sacrificing;  one 
to  whom  no  cry  is  put  up  in  vain,  one  who  does  not 
let  even  an  insignificant  sparrow  fall  to  the  ground 
without  His  sympathetic  care  and  tender  help.  If 
this  be  true,  how  different  is  the  universe  of  him 
who  knows  it  from  the  universe  of  one  who  knows 
it  not!  Not  greater  is  the  contrast  between  day 
and  night,  between  a  healthful,  joyous  life  and  slow 
perpetual  torture. 

In  this  message  of  the  Gospel  of  John  a  perennial 
need  of  human  nature  is  supplied.  God  is  like  Christ 
— as  sensitive  to  our  woes  as  Jesus  was  to  the  suffer- 
ings of  agonizing  men  and  women,  as  ready  to  for- 
give our  sins  as  was  He  who  cried  from  a  Roman 
cross,  "Father,  forgive  them !"  as  ready  to  enable  us 
to  overcome  our  weaknesses  and  temptations  as  was 
the  great  Teacher  of  Nazareth  to  transform  an  im- 
pulsive and  wayward  Peter  into  a  dauntless  apostle ; 
a  doubting  Thomas  into  a  man  of  triumphant 
faith;  or  a  son  of  thunder  into  an  apostle  of  love. 

All   that   makes    Christianity   a  more   excellent 
religion  than  Judaism,  Buddhism,  or  Mohammed- 
anism  goes  back   ultimately   to  this   fundamental 
message — the  Christ-likeness  of  God. 
5 


66         THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

This  supreme  revelation,  of  the  essential  moral 
and  religious  nature  of  God  finds  its  complement  in 
this  evangelist's  metaphysical  definition  of  God,  viz. : 
"God  is  spirit."  This  thought,  too,  was  funda- 
mental and  epoch-making.  If  God  is  spirit,  He  does 
not  need  the  food  offered  in  animal  sacrifices.  If 
He  is  spirit,  He  is  not  confined  to  one  locality, 
whether  that  locality  be  Zion  or  Gerizim,  Gothic 
cathedral  or  Quaker  meeting-house.  "They  that 
worship  Him  must  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in 
truth."  Wherever  this  truth  is  really  apprehended, 
the  relation  of  individual  souls  to  God  will  be  trans- 
formed, for  "spirit  with  spirit  can  meet,"  and  all 
expressions  of  public  worship  will  be  simplified  and 
ennobled. 

Great  as  is  the  message  of  this  Gospel  with  regard 
to  Christ — great  as  it  is  with  regard  to  God — it  is 
equally  great  in  its  declaration  of  the  exalted  privi- 
leges and  destiny  of  mankind.  Christ  was  the  only 
begotten  son  of  God,  but  "to  as  many  as  received 
Him,  to  them  gave  He  the  right  to  become  sons  of 
God."  The  purpose  of  the  coming  of  the  Son  of 
God  into  the  world  was  to  make  sons  of  God  of  us. 
God  became  incarnate  in  Him,  that  through  Him 
He  might  become  incarnate  in  us  all;  such  is  the 


MESSAGE   IN   THE  JOHANNINE   WRITINGS        67 

simple,  sublime,  dazzling  message  of  this  Gospel. 
This  message  does  not  rest  upon  one  text,  but 
crops  up  again  and  again.  "I  in  them  and  thou 
in  Me,  that  they  may  be  perfected  into  one,"  is, 
according  to  this  Gospel,  Christ's  own  ideal  as 
expressed  in  His  prayer.  A  vital  mystic  union 
with  Christ  and  God,  so  that  we  share  the  life, 
the  impulses,  the  purposes,  and  the  love  of  both; 
it  is  this,  according  to  the  Gospel  of  John,  to  be 
a  Christian. 

But  this  is  not  all  the  message.  Christians  may 
not  only  share  God's  life,  but  they  are  in  the  world 
to  do  His  work.  "As  Thou  didst  send  Me  into  the 
world,  even  so  sent  I  them  into  the  world,"  says  the 
Saviour.  Sent  into  the  world  as  Christ  was  sent 
into  the  world!  Sent  to  reveal  the  character  of 
God!  Sent  to  be  a  christ  wherever  one  may  live. 
What  a  responsibility!  What  a  privilege!  We 
hesitate  to  believe  this  message,  our  lives  are  so  poor 
and  mean  and  our  faith  so  weak.  If  our  modern 
science  teaches  us  anything,  it  teaches  that  the^full 
powers  of  a  life  can  never  be  enjoyed  by  an  organ- 
ism which  refuses  to  perform  all  the  functions  of  its 

^K^MiMB^MHM>l>MM^MMV^*2"JQ|MBMMHIHBiV*MMV*M>*MMNa^ni^">''Aa'          ••^•B •••••• 

life.  Until  we  really  abandon  ourselves  to  be  like 
Christ  and  to  do  His  work  we  shall  never  know  what 


68          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

it  is  to  be  united  in  one  spirit  of  love  and  power  with 
Him  and  with  God. 

It  often  happens  that  a  writer  is  profoundly  in- 
fluenced by  systems  of  thought  which  he  rejects. 
Apocalyptic  Judaism  had  given  up  hope  that  the 
world-order  could  be  redeemed;  it  was  to  be  de- 
stroyed in  a  great  cataclysmic  upheaval.  Gnosti- 
cism, too,  regarded  the  world  as  the  work  of  an  evil 
god  and  as  hopelessly  corrupt.  The  author  of  this 
Gospel,  while  rejecting  both  Judaism  and  Gnosti- 
cism, like  them  had  no  hope  for  the  redemption  of 
the  world.  He  represents  Christ  as  saying:  "I  pray 
not  for  the  world,  but  for  those  whom  Thou  hast 
given  Me"  (xvii.  9)  ;  the  world  passeth  away  and 
the  lust  thereof  (i  Jno.  ii.  17).  He  thus  placed  on 
the  Gospel  a  serious  limitation,  making  it  apply  to 
an  elect  number  only.  This  limitation  is  a  serious 
defect  in  the  author's  presentation  of  the  Christian 
message,  though  in  reality  it  affected  the  writer  only 
in  certain  moods.  Sometimes  he  rises  to  a  fine 
universalism  and  declares  God's  love  for  the  world 
(iii.  16). 

We  turn  now  to  the  First  Epistle  of  John,  an 
epistle  which  was  evidently  called  forth  by  teachers 
who  were  Docetists, i.  e.,  they  taught  that  Jesus  was 


MESSAGE   IN   THE  JOHANNINE   WRITINGS         69 

not  really  the  Christ — He  only  seemed  to  be.  They 
were  also  libertines — they  held  that  a  Christian  man 
is  bound  by  no  law,  and  that  he  is  under  no  obliga- 
tion to  observe  the  commands  of  God,  since  he  is 
above  all  law;  that  no  sin  is  possible  to  him,  even 
though  he  live  in  disregard  of  all  precepts,  human 
and  Divine. 

In  opposition  to  this  the  author  of  this  Epistle 
teaches  that  it  is  a  prime  condition,  both  of  the 
knowledge  and  the  love  of  God,  that  we  keep  His 
commandments.  He  makes  it  clear  by  statements 
both  positive  and  negative  that  Christianity  has  in 
it  no  place  for  antinomianism.  "This  is  the  love  of 
God,  that  we  keep  His  commandments,"  he  declares 
(v.  3)  ;  again,  "He  that  saith,  I  know  Him,  and 
keepeth  not  His  commandments,  is  a  liar,  and  the 
truth  is  not  in  him"  (ii.  4).  "He  that  saith  he 
abideth  in  Him,  ought  himself  also  to  walk  even  as 
He  walked"  (ii.  6).  "Whosoever  abideth  in  Him 
sinneth  not :  whosoever  sinneth  hath  not  seen  Him, 
neither  known  Him"  (iii.  6). 

In  the  view  of  this  writer,  then,  the  Christian 
religion  is  bound  up  with  the  moral  law.  No  one 
can  know  so  much  of  God  that  he  is  emancipated 
from  the  necessity  of  personal  purity,  self-control, 


7O         THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

common  honesty,  and  the  duties  of  common  kindli- 
ness and  humanity. 

Such  errors  in  the  theory  of  conduct  are  in  the 
writer's  view  closely  bound  up  with  errors  of  theo- 
logy. The  men  who  deny  that  Jesus  has  come  in 
the  flesh  as  the  Messiah,  deny  the  Father  as  well 
as  the  Son  he  declares  (ii.  22,  23).  He  means  that 
these  men  have  entirely  misconceived  the  nature  of 
God.  They  have  thought  of  Him  as  a  Being  far 
away,  too  holy  to  come  into  contact  with  corrupt 
matter ;  too  superior  to  be  touched  with  any  feeling 
for  human  infirmity.  They  have  missed  altogether 
the  fundamental  fact  of  the  Christ-likeness  of  God. 
Their  views  of  life  were  false  because  their  views 
of  God  were  wrong. 

The  necessities  of  the  situation  led  this  great 
thinker  to  assert  the  necessity  of  belief  in  the  Mes- 
siahship  of  Jesus — that  Jesus  is  the  Christ ;  for  one 
cannot  believe  in  the  Christ-likeness  of  God — the 
goodness  and  kindness  of  God — unless  he  believes 
in  the  intimate  relation  of  Jesus  to  God,  and  accepts 
Christ  as  the  revelation  of  the  Father.  If  God  is 
not  manifested  in  Jesus,  the  supreme  character  of 
the  race,  we  know  nothing  of  His  nature.  The 
\author's  position,  then,  is:  right  conduct  is  abso- 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  JOHANNINE   WRITINGS         Jl 

lutely  essential,  but  right  conduct  is  impossible  with- 
out right  views  of  God,  and  right  views  of  God  are 
impossible  apart  from  the  revelation  of  His  character 
made  in  Christ. 

The  Epistle  was,  however,  not  only  written  to 
oppose  error  but  to  set  forth  an  alluring  truth — a 
truth  strong  enough  to  overcome  the  seemingly  un- 
conquerable obstacle  which  stands  in  the  way  of 
everyone. 

This  obstacle  is  the  necessity  of  keeping  God's 
law.  That  law  is  pure,  holy,  incomparably  high. 
We  are  weak,  imperfect,  prone  to  sin.  How  can 
we  keep  the  law  ?  When  we  would  do  good,  evil  is 
present  with  us,  as  St.  Paul  said. 

The  alluring  truth  which  this  Epistle  opposes  to 
these  hard  facts  is  the  truth  already  set  forth  in  the 
Gospel,  that  God  invites  man  to  enter  into  a  fellow- 
ship with  Him  in  Jesus  Christ — a  fellowship  which 
binds  man  to  God  in  such  a  real  union  of  life  and 
of  power  that  the  demands  of  the  highest  law  can 
be  met  and  kept.  "Behold  what  manner  of  love  the 
Father  hath  bestowed  upon  us,  that  we  should  be 
called  children  of  God"  (iii.  i).  "Ye  know  that 
He  [Christ]  was  manifested  to  take  away  our  sins, 
and  in  Him  is  no  sin"  (iii.  5).  "Whosoever  abideth 


72          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

in  Him  sinneth  not:  whosoever  sinneth  hath  not 
seen  Him,  neither  known  Him"  (iii.  6).  "God  is 
light,  and  in  Him  is  no  darkness  at  all.  If  we  say 
that  we  have  fellowship  with  Him  and  walk  in 
darkness,  we  lie,  and  do  not  the  truth :  but  if  we 
walk  in  the  light  as  He  is  in  the  light,  we  have  fel- 
lowship one  with  another  (ii.  5,  ff.).  "God  is  love 
and  he  that  abideth  in  love  abideth  in  God,  and  God 
in  him"  (iv.  16).  "The  world  passeth  away,  and 
the  lust  thereof:  but  he  that  doeth  the  will  of  God 
abideth  forever"  (ii.  17). 

In  such  passages  as  these  this  great  writer 
sets  forth  the  perfect  character  of  God.  Light 
and  darkness  are  in  his  vocabulary  moral 
terms.  "God  is  light"  is  an  assertion  of  His 
moral  perfectness.  "God  is  love"  asserts  His 
social  and  religious  perfection.  "If  we  walk  in 
the  light  as  He  is  in  the  light,  we  have  fel- 
lowship," affords  the  key  to  the  great  secret 
of  fulfilling  the  law.  "He  that  abides  in 
love  abides  in  God"  approaches  the  same  great 
secret  from  the  side  of  religion.  Fellowship  with 
God,  union  with  Him  in  life,  in  love,  in  moral 
purpose,  and  in  moral  triumph — thus  abiding 
in  God  and  so  gaining  eternal  life — such  is 


MESSAGE   IN   THE  JOHANNINE   WRITINGS        73 

the  Christian  message  as  voiced  in  this  Epistle.1 
I  have  already  indicated  how  the  message  of  this 
Epistle  is  in  reality  the  message  of  the  Gospel  put 
in  another  way.  When  the  two  are  taken  together, 
these  writings  present  a  sublime  theology,  as  well 
as  (if  we  disregard  the  limitation  noted  above)  the 
most  exalted  theory  of  human  destiny. 

"God  is  spirit,"  "God  is  light,"  and  "God  is  love" 
— God  perfect  metaphysically,  bright  and  illumin- 
ating morally,  fundamentally  social  and  religious  in 
His  nature — where  shall  we  look  for  a  theology 
more  satisfying  to  the  intellect,  or  which  appeals 
more  to  the  soul  ?  If  we  ask  for  fuller  definition  of 
God's  love,  if  we  would  have  it  described  or  exem- 
plified, we  are  pointed  to  Jesus  Christ.  God  is  like 
Him.  Love  was  never  more  sublimely  revealed 
than  in  Jesus.  His  love  is  in  reality  God's  love.2 

These  conceptions  are  not  only  beautiful  and 
satisfying,  but  they  are  ultimate.  So  far  as  we  can 

1  The  writer  acknowledges  his  indebtedness  to  the  treatment 
of  this  subject  by  Professor  McGiffert,  both  in  his  Apostolic 
Age  and  his  article,  "Mysticism  in  the  Early  Church,"  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Theology,  vol.  xi.  pp.  407-457. 

*  It  is  my  conviction  that  this  picture  of  God  really  goes 
back  to  Jesus  Himself.  It  is  here  called  the  Johannine  con- 
ception of  God,  because  it  first  found  literary  expression  in 
the  work  of  this  writer. 


74         THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

at  present  see,  no  higher  idea  of  God  can  be  formed 
until  man  shall  develop  some  higher  powers  than 
those  which  he  now  possesses. 

"Immortal  love,  forever  full, 

Forever   flowing    free, 
Forever   shared,   forever  whole, 
A  never-ebbing  sea." 

One  hardly  needs  to  point  out  that  the  Johannine 
message  to  man  is  the  supreme  message  of  the 
mystics — union  with  God.  Sin  is  to  be  overcome 
in  the  Divine  fellowship;  conformity  to  the  highest 
and  most  rigorous  law  is  achieved  through  the 
Divine  power;  human  destiny  is  to  be  realised  in 
the  Divine  sonship;  an  anointing  or  a  Christening 
(the  reception  of  a  portion  of  the  real  Christ  spirit) 
is  to  be  received  which  will  teach  and  guide  one; 
the  individual  is  to  become  one  with  Christ  and  the 
Father;  is  to  abide  in  God;  is  to  be  sent  forth  as 
a  christ  into  the  world  (i.  e.  as  an  interpreter  of 
God),  and  because  united  with  God,  though  "the 
world  pass  away"  and  all  its  pursuits,  the  believer 
"shall  abide  forever." 

This  exalted  message  of  human  privilege  and 
triumph  is  the  complement  of  the  exalted  Johannine 
message  concerning  God.  So  far  as  I  can  see,  it  is 
as  final  as  the  other.  Men  need  some  new  faculties 


75 
before  they  can  appreciate  the  privileges  of  any 

BM>M*M*I>HIB*MVM 

higher  destiny.  When  this  Johannine  message  is 
experienced  by  the  Church  and  translated  into  life, 
the  Kingdom  of  God  will  have  come 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  CHRISTIAN   MESSAGE  IN  THE  EASTERN  CHURCH 

To  do  justice  to  the  Christian  message  of  a  single 
great  man  in  a  few  pages — i.e.  to  present  it  in  a 
fully  rounded  outline  is  impossible.  Much  more 
impossible  is  it  to  present  adequately  in  a  chapter 
the  Christian  thought  of  a  great  section  of  the 
Church  through  eighteen  hundred  years. 

While  we  cannot  do  this  adequately,  there  are, 
nevertheless,  certain  instructive  outlines  which  we 
may  even  in  this  brief  compass  follow,  and  if  we 
bear  in  mind  that  in  each  generation  streams  of 
Christian  experience  and  devotion,  deep  and  rich, 
have  been  constantly  flowing  in  spite  of  all  theology, 
we  shall  not  even  in  this  hasty  glance  do  injustice 
to  the  continuous  Christian  life. 

I  have  called  this  chapter  the  "Christian  Message 
in  the  Eastern  Church."  By  the  Eastern  Church 
we  mean  the  Church  in  Asia,  in  the  Nile  Valley, 
and  in  Europe  as  far  West  as  Greece.  In  this 
division  Italy  belongs  to  the  West  as  does  Carthage 

76 


MESSAGE   IN    THE   EASTERN    CHURCH  77 

in  North  Africa.  Greece,  however,  faced  to  the 
Eastward.  Her  racial  connections  were  with  Asia 
Minor,  and  her  tendencies  of  thought  in  the  period 
before  us  were  with  that  East  which  through  the 
influence  of  Alexander  the  Great  and  his  successors 
she  had  in  part  Hellenized.  Some  things  which 
we  have  to  say  of  the  Eastern  Church  in  the  early 
centuries  apply  also  to  the  West.  While  there  were 
certain  marked  differences  of  tendency  in  the  two 
sections  even  in  the  second  century,  the  real  division 
between  the  two  did  not  come  till  later. 

In  passing  from  the  New  Testament  to  the  writ- 
ings of  the  Apostolic  Fathers,  one  feels  as  though  he 
had  passed  from  the  fertile  Tropics  far  toward  the 
sterile  country  of  the  Poles,  so  arid  and  uninspiring 
are  the  writings  of  these  men  in  comparison  with 
Paul  and  the  Johannine  Books.  As,  however,  Pro- 
fessor Dobschiitz  has  shown  in  his  great  book, 
Christian  Life  in  the  Primitive  Church,  the  life  of 
the  Churches  maintained  for  centuries  a  purity,  an 
elevation  and  an  unselfishness  which  attracted  mil- 
lions to  her.  It  was  this  lofty  impulse^to  Christian 
living — an  impulse  which  did  not  spend  itself  for 
some  centuries — which  after  more  than  two  cen- 
turies of  persecution  finally  compelled  a  Roman 


78          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

emperor  to  make  Christianity  the  legal  religion  of 
the  Empire.  If  then  we  confine  our  attention  to 
other  things,  it  must  not  be  thought  that  we  ignore 
or  undervalue  the  noble  life  of  the  early  Christians, 
in  which  was  powerfully  voiced  to  the  world  in  a 
practical  and  convincing  way  the  Fatherhood  of 
God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man. 

The  message  of  Christianity  in  this  ancient 
Church  was  shaped  by  conflict  with  the  seething 
thought  of  the  world.  This  thought  affected  Chris- 
tians here  and  there  as  it  mingled  with  their  Chris- 
tianity, producing  variations  from  the  received  type 
of  Christian  thinking.  Such  variations  were  called 
"heresies,"  i.e.  private  "choices."  In  struggling 
with  these  "choices"  or  "heresies"  the  Church  her- 
self underwent  gigantic  transformations  in  organ- 
ization and  in  the  conception  of  what  her  message 
was  and  is. 

The  earliest  of  these  heresies  were  those  of  the 
Gnostic  group,  the  beginnings  of  which  we  have 
traced  in  Colossae  as  early  as  the  days  of  Paul.  Its 
elements,  as  Bousset  and  Gunkel  have  shown, 
existed  already  in  pre-Christian  Judaism,  where 
Judaism  had  been  exposed  to  Persian  and  other 
Oriental  influences.  How  Gnosticism  had  shaped 


MESSAGE   IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  79 

the  Christian  message  in  the  Epistles  of  Paul's 
Roman  captivity  and  in  the  Johannine  writings  has 
been  shown  in  the  last  two  chapters,  but  the  influ- 
ence of  Gnosticism  by  no  means  ended  there. 

Gnostic  opinions  were  hydra-headed,  and  Gnostic 
sects  as  numerous  and  variable  as  those  of  modern 
Protestantism.  The  significant  ideas  of  Gnosticism 
came  from  Persia.  Gnostics,  like  Zoroastrians,  be- 
lieved that  there  were  two  gods — a  god  of  good 
and  a  god  of  evil.  These  gods  were  not  superior 
one  to  the  other,  but  divided  the  universe  between 
them,  struggling  with  one  another  for  the  possession 
of  debatable  portions.  The  evil  god  had  made  the 
world.  Matter  was  accordingly  intrinsically  cor- 
rupt. The  soul  was  a  spark  from  the  god  of  good, 
so  that  Redemption  was  a  process  of  delivering  the 
pure  soul  from  corrupt  matter.  The  pure  god  did 
not  come  into  contact  with  the  impure  world  him- 
self, but  through  a  series  of  agencies,  each  a  little 
less  pure  than  himself.  To  these  agencies,  or  aeons, 
high-sounding  names  were  given,  such  as  Logos, 
Aeon,  Bathmos,  Pleuramos,  Sophia,  Gnosis,  etc. 
Redemption  was  with  the  Gnostics  accomplished  by 
knowledge,  not  by  faith.  The  belief  that  matter 
was  impure  led  some  of  them,  like  the  Docetists,  to 


8O          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

deny  the  reality  of  the  Incarnation,  as  we  saw  in 
the  last  chapter ;  it  led  some  to  asceticism,  and  some 
to  libertinism. 

It  was  in  her  struggles  with  Gnosticism  that  the 
Church  developed  her  form  of  government  by 
bishops,  selected  and  defined  her  canon  of  New 
Testament  Scripture,  and  formulated  her  creeds. 
Indeed,  she  did  more  than  formulate  creeds ;  she  lost 
in  this  struggle  the  conception  that  faith  is  an  atti- 
tude of  soul  toward  God,  and  thought  of  it  more 
and  more  as  a  body  of  doctrine  expressed  in  a  form 
of  words.  Faith  thus  was  conceived  not  as  the  out- 
going of  the  soul  in  response  to  God's  call,  but  as  a 
body  of  doctrine  external  to  the  believer,  to  be 
accepted  by  him.  Thus  the  test  question  came  to 
be:  "What  think  ye  of  Christ?"  rather  than:  "What 
have  you  experienced  of  Christ?" 

This  change  began  even  before  the  close  of  the 
New  Testament.  In  the  Epistles  to  Timothy  and 
Titus,  which  are  now  pretty  clearly  proved  to  be  for 
the  most  part  from  a  later  writer  than  Paul,  we  find 
two  elements  of  this  change  in  process.  The  Church 
is  in  these  Epistles  no  longer  the  mystic  body  of 
Christ  (as  in  Rom.  xii.  and  I  Cor.  xii.),  but  it  is  an 
external  organization,  which  must  be  kept  in  worthy 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  8l 

form.  The  officers  of  this  organization  have  as- 
sumed great  importance,  and  much  space  is  devoted 
to  detailing  the  qualifications  of  bishops  and  dea- 
cons. More  significant  than  this  is,  however,  the 
lapse  which  these  Epistles  reveal  from  the  Pauline 
conception  of  faith.  In  Paul,  faith  is  a  kind  of 
sanctified  and  transfigured  love;  here  it  is  an  objec- 
tive body  of  doctrine — such  as  was  later  called  a 
"deposit" — which  has  been  received  from  the  first 
teachers  of  Christianity,  and  which  must  be  kept 
intact  and  handed  on  (see  I  Tim.  iv.  I,  6,  16;  v.  8; 
2  Tim.  i.  13;  iii.  14;  iv.  7). 

Some  twenty  years  later  (about  112-115  A.D.)  we 
find  both  of  these  tendencies  heightened  in  the 
Epistles  of  Ignatius  of  Antioch,  who  sought  to  cor- 
rect the  errors  of  the  Docetists  in  Asia  Minor, 
against  whom  the  First  Epistle  of  John  had  been 
directed.  In  order  that  it  might  be  clear  to  any 
puzzled  soul  where  the  Church  is  and  what  it  is, 
Ignatius  exalts  the  Bishop.  In  a  lesser  degree  he 
exalts  the  other  officers — Presbyters  and  Deacons — 
but  the  bishops  most  of  all.  In  his  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians,  he  says  men  are  joined  to  the  bishop  as 
to  Jesus  Christ.  Men  must  be  careful  not  to  set 
themselves  against  the  bishop  lest  they  set  them- 


82          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

selves  against  God  (Ephesians  iv.  5  and  6).  Simi- 
larly in  his  letter  to  the  Philippians  iii.  and  iv.  he 
says :  "As  many  as  are  of  God  and  Jesus  Christ  are 
also  with  the  bishop.  There  is  but  one  Eucharist 
and  that  is  at  the  altar  where  the  bishop  is." 

Thus  was  set  the  pattern  of  Church  organization 
which  was  destined  to  prevail  for  centuries.  The 
emphasis  laid  by  Ignatius  on  the  episcopate  was 
somewhat  in  advance  of  his  time,  but,  as  the  cen- 
turies passed,  it  was  everywhere  accepted.  The 
conflict  with  Gnosticism  had  given  the  Church  her 
government. 

In  asserting  against  the  Docetists  the  reality  of 
the  facts  of  Christ's  life,  Ignatius  almost  anticipates 
the  words  of  that  Creed  which  was  afterwards 
called  by  the  name  of  the  Apostles.  Thus  in  his 
Epistle  to  the  Trallians  (chap,  ix.)  he  says:  "Stop 
your  ears,  therefore,  when  any  one  speaks  to  you  at 
variance  with  Jesus  Christ,  who  was  descended 
from  David  and  was  also  of  Mary:  who  also  was 
truly  born  and  did  eat  and  drink.  He  was  truly 
persecuted  under  Pontius  Pilate ;  he  was  truly  cruci- 
fied and  truly  died  in  the  sight  of  beings  in  heaven 
and  on  earth  and  under  the  earth ;  he  also  was  truly 
raised  from  the  dead,  his  Father  quickening  him, 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  83 

-4> 

even  as  after  the  same  manner  his  Father  will  so 
raise  us  up  who  believe  in  him  by  Jesus  Christ,  apart 
from  whom  we  do  not  have  real  life." 

Thus  in  the  writings  of  Ignatius  years  before  the 
formation  of  any  of  the  creeds  which  have  survived, 
we  see  a  Christian  in  repelling  Gnosticism  instinc- 
tively resorting  to  such  assertions  as  shaped  the 
creeds. 

A  few  years  later  we  can  trace  the  same  tendency 
in  Rome.  Marcion,  whose  conception  of  God  was 
closely  akin  to  the  Gnostic,  had  about  140  A.D.  set 
up  a  congregation  of  his  own  in  Rome,  and,  to  make 
sure  that  none  of  her  members  were  infected  with 
his  notions,  the  Roman  congregation  adopted  by  the 
middle  of  the  second  century  a  form  of  baptismal 
confession,  which  she  required  of  her  members.  It 
ran  as  follows: — "I  believe  in  God  the  Father 
Almighty  and  in  Christ  Jesus  his  son,  who  was  born 
of  Mary  the  Virgin,  was  crucified  under  Pontius 
Pilate  and  buried,  on  the  third  day  he  arose  from 
the  dead,  ascended  into  Heaven,  sitteth  on  the  right 
hand  of  the  Father,  from  whence  he  cometh  to  judge 
quick  and  dead;  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  resurrec- 
tion of  the  flesh." 

By  about  400  A.D.  this  confession  had  been  elab- 


84          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

•4 

orated  into  that  which  we  know  as  the  Apostles 
Creed,  and  the  legend  that  each  of  the  Apostles  had 
contributed  a  sentence  to  it  had  been  born. 

Again,  the  Gnostics,  Basilides,  and  Valentinus, 
were  the  first  to  appeal  to  Apostolic  writings  in 
support  of  their  views,  and  Marcion  about  140  A.D. 
actually  formed  a  New  Testament  canon,  taking 
the  Gospel  of  Luke  and  revising  it  as  the  one 
gospel  of  his  canon,  and  admitting  ten  Epistles  of 
Paul.  The  Epistles  to  Timothy  and  Titus  he,  like 
modern  scholars,  regarded  as  un-Pauline.  It  thus 
became  necessary  for  the  Church  to  define  her 
canon,  and  by  about  170  A.D.  we  find  an  authorita- 
tive list  of  New  Testament  books.  It  thus  hap- 
pened that  at  the  close  of  the  second  century  the 
Church  emerged  from  her  first  fierce  conflict  with 
the  seething  thought  of  the  world,  equipped  with 
an  episcopal  government,  a  confession  of  faith,  and 
a  well-defined  list  of  authoritative  books — all  of 
which  this  conflict  had  given  her. 

Of  these  three  results  the  second  is  the  most 
important,  for  when  faith  was  conceived  as  more  a 
form  of  sound  words  than  as  an  attitude  of  soul  to 
God,  or  a  spiritual  experience  to  be  expressed  in  a 
life,  a  long  step  had  been  taken  away  from  genuine 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  85 

Christianity,  and  a  long  step  toward  those  religious 
quarrels,  heresy  trials  and  wars,  which  have  been 
the  curse  of  Christian  history. 

The  immediate  effect  of  the  adoption  of  this  form 
of  confession — an  effect  which  has  gone  on  with 
increasing  momentum  as  the  centuries  have  passed — 
was  to  accomplish  the  excommunication  and  the 
anathematizing  of  all  who  differed. 

Undoubtedly  the  easy  way  to  deal  with  heretics  is 
to  put  them  up  against  the  yard-stick  of  a  creed  and 
if  their  measurements  are  not  right  to  "deliver 
them  over  to  Satan."  Fortunately  for  Christianity 
in  the  East,  faith  in  truth  and  in  the  power  of  truth 
did  not  immediately  die.  There  were  those  who  for 
a  time  overcame  error,  no^bj^coj^gnma^tion^  but  by 
teaching  truth  more  fully. 

Such  in  some  measure  was  Justin  Martyr,  who 
had  been  a  philosopher  before  he  had  become  a 
Christian.  Such  in  larger  measure  were  Pantaenus, 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  and  Origen.  The  last  three 
were  successively  the  heads  of  a  school  in  Alexan- 
dria, at  the  end  of  the  second  and  beginning  of  the 
third  centuries,  and  gave  for  a  time  to  the  Chris- 
tianity of  that  city  a  breadth  of  outlook  and  a  beauty 
of  spirit  which  are  to  this  day  unique. 


86          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

The  most  attractive  thinker  among  these — a  man 
whose  great  soul  was  a  worthy  successor  to  Paul 
and  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel — was  Cement 
of  Alexandria.  Cement  believed  not  in  a  God  who 
dwells  in  some  remote  corner  of  His  universe,  but 
in  a  God  who  is  present  in  His  world.  Language 
seems  poor  and  inadequate  as  Clement  seeks  to 
assert  and  illustrate  the  workings  of  the  immanent 
God.  Because  deity  indwells  in  humanity  Cement 
saw  no  distinction  between  revelation  and  the  high- 
est products  of  the  human  reason.  What  God  re- 
veals and  man  discovers,  is  all  one.  Greek  phil-  ~~ 
osophy  was  as  much  a  divine  revelation  as  Hebrew 
prophecy.  Man  was  made  in  the  image  of  God. 
When  that  image  was  defaced  by  sin,  God  sent 
Christ,  the  incarnate  Logos,  to  reveal  again  and 
perfectly  the  divine  image.  Christ,  not  Adam,  was 
to  Clement  the  normal  man.  The  history  of  man's 
redemption  became  to  Clement  the  education  of  the 
human  race  under  the  instruction  of  the  indwelling 
deity.  As  the  Logos  he  had  always  been  leading 
men — the  essential  Christ  had  always  been  among 
them.  The  redemptive  work  of  Christ  was  to 
Cement  the  revelation  of  the  normal  relation  to 
God  in  its  perfect  manifestation,  rather  than  the 


MESSAGE   IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  87 

restoration  of  a  broken  relationship  long  ago  lost. 
This  revelation  was  in  Clement's  view  accomplished 
by  the  incarnation  rather  than  by  the  death  of  the 
Saviour.  Faith  to  Clement  was  the  inward  response 
of  a  soul  constituted  for  the  truth ;  it  is  the  spiritual 
vision  by  which  spiritual  things  are  discerned.  It 
corresponds  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit  to  the  eye 
by  which  things  in  the  material  realm  are  perceived. 

Holding  such  views  as  these,  Clement  did  not 
treat  the  heretics  as  did  others.  Surrounded  as  he 
was  by  the  worst  of  heresies,  he  boldly  urges  upon 
the  heretics  a  deeper  study  of  the  truth  as  the  one 
remedy  for  false  opinions. 

The  ideal  attitude  of  Clement  was,  however,  too 
noble,  too  intellectual,  too  spiritual  for  most  of  the 
world.  The  trend  of  the  age  was  toward  a  faith 
expressed  in  definite  formulae,  and  toward  the  pro- 
scription of  any  who  could  not  accept  the  orthodox 
shibboleth.  The  spirit  of  Clement  lingered  on, 
nevertheless,  and  manifested  itself  in  lesser  measure 
in  a  few  choice  souls,  one  of  whom  was  Athanasius, 
who  lived  a  century  later. 

By  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century  Gnosti- 
cism had  practically  spent  its  force,  so  far  as  the 
Church  was  concerned.  The  three  measures  of 


88          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

organization  which  the  Church  had  taken  in  self- 
defence — the  episcopal  government,  the  well-defined 
New  Testament  canon,  and,  above  all,  the  efficient 
weapon  of  a  definite  confession  of  faith — had  ex- 
cluded the  Gnostics.  It  often  happens,  however, 
that  those  who  reject  an  idea  are  profoundly  af- 
fected by  it ;  and  this  was  the  case  with  Christianity. 
The  Church  had  energetically  repudiated  the  con- 
ception that  there  were  two  gods,  one  good  and  the 
other  evil,  and  that  the  world  was  made  by  the  evil 
god;  but  she  had  nevertheless  widely  accepted  the 
corollary  of  that  belief,  viz.  that  matter  is  inherently 
sinful,  and  that  he  who  would  deliver  his  soul  in 
purity  from  the  present  evil  world  of  matter  must 
withdraw  from  the  ordinary  occupations  of  life. 
Undoubtedly,  one  influence  which  helped  to  render 
this  view  attractive  was  the  social  corruption  which 
the  cults  of  Astarte  and  Aphrodite  had  caused  to 
permeate  the  social  fabric  of  the  ancient  world. 

Thus,  about  200  A.D.,  men  began,  especially  in 
Egypt,  to  withdraw  from  ordinary  active  life  and  to 
flee  to  the  desert.  They  did  it  at  first,  it  is  true, 
sometimes  to  escape  personal  danger,  but  the  idea 
that  marriage  was  an  occasion  to  the  flesh,  and  that 
he  was  holier  who  was  free  from  the  entanglements 


MESSAGE   IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  89 

of  this  life,  appears  to  have  influenced  many  during 
the  century  before  the  time  of  Constantine.  The 
full  development  of  this  movement  as  monasticism 
did  not  occur,  however,  till  a  later  period,  and  was 
hastened  by  other  influences,  though  it  began  as  an 
illogical  acceptance  by  the  orthodox  of  Gnostic 
principles. 

Then  came,  early  in  the  fourth  century,  the  recog- 
nition of  the  Christian  Church  by  Constantine. 
This  shrewd  statesman  saw  in  the  Church  an  organi- 
zation which  permeated  his  empire.  Whatever  truth 
there  may  be  in  the  legend  that  he  saw  in  a  vision 
a  cross  in  the  sky  inscribed  with  the  words,  "By 
this  sign  conquer,"  it  is  clear  that  he  saw  in  the 
Church  an  instrument  of  which  he  hoped  to  make 
powerful  political  capital.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
short-sighted  human  beings  who  had  recently  been 
persecuted  to  the  death  should  have  been  wild  with 
joy  when  Christianity  became  the  legitimate  religion 
of  the  empire,  but  we  who  look  back  upon  the  event 
and  perceive  the  secularization  and  degradation  of 
Christianity  which  followed  feel  more  like  weeping 
than  rejoicing. 

It  was  not  many  years  before  some,  even  in  the 
Church  of  that  day,  entertained  similar  feelings. 


9O          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Many  not  only  did  not  feel  at  home  in  a  secularized 
Church,  but  they  had  so  long  suffered  persecution 
that  they  could  not  believe  that  they  were  really 
Christians  when  they  were  free  from  torture,  hence 
they  withdrew  from  the  cities,  especially  in  Egypt, 
and  largely  swelled  the  ranks  of  the  ascetics  out  of 
which  the  monks  were  afterwards  organized,  inflict- 
ing upon  themselves  in  the  scorching  deserts, 
through  hunger  and  thirst,  the  tortures  which  a 
Christian  Government  refused  to  inflict  upon  them. 
No  doubt  they  found  in  these  painful  exercises  a 
grim  comfort,  and  possibly  a  deep  joy,  but  by  their 
withdrawal  from  the  activities  of  the  world  they 
declared  that  for  them  Christianity  had  no  message 
for  the  common,  laborious,  and  domestic  life  of  man. 
In  any  sketch  of  the  Christian  message  in  the 
Eastern  Church,  considerable  space  must  be  given 
to  its  tendency  to  form  creeds.  We  have  already 
traced  the  beginnings  of  the  so-called  Apostles 
Creed.  That  beginning  served  as  a  basis  for  all 
future  definitions  of  doctrine.  Gnosticism,  which 
was  largely  Oriental  in  its  kinship,  had  called  that 
Roman  formula  into  existence,  and  it  had  been  con- 
structed in  days  when  most  Christians  were  un- 
speculative  and  were  satisfied  with  assertions  in  the 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  QI 

language  of  Scripture.  It  had,  however,  laid  _the 
stress  on  what  the  Christian  thinks  of  Christ,  and 
as  time  rolled  on  and  learning  increased,  the  Greek 
speculative  and  dogmatic  habit  prevailed,  so  that 
what  one  thought  about  some  of  the  more  difficult 
matters  connected  with  Christ  became  of  prime 
importance.  Antioch,  like  Alexandria,  was  a  centre 
of  learning.  At  Antioch  they  emphasized  the  aloof- 
ness of  God  from  the  world;  at  Alexandria  His 
nearness.  At  Antioch  they  taught  that  Christ  was 
not  begotten  of  God,  but  created  by  Him;  that  He 
is  not  of  the  same  substance  as  God,  but  of  like 
substance.  Arius,  about  318  A.D.,  went  from  An- 
tioch to  Alexandria  with  such  teaching  and  was 
deposed  from  his  functions  as  a  Christian  deacon. 
Immediately  all  the  East  was  aflame.  A  traveller 
relates  that  the  discussions  of  this  matter  took  such 
hold  of  the  popular  heart  that,  if  one  asked  a  boat- 
man the  fare  across  a  river,  he  would  answer  with 
assertions  of  the  created  or  uncreated  character  of 
the  Son.  All  this  occurred  just  at  the  beginning  of 
the  fourth  century.  It  happened,  therefore,  that  at 
the  moment  when  Constantine  hoped  to  make  the 
Church  an  instrument  to  cement  his  dominions  to- 
gether he  found  her  rent  with  dissension.  Like  a 


92          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

practical  statesman  he  called  a  council  of  all  the 
bishops  in  his  dominions  to  settle  the  controversy. 
This  council  assembled  in  325  A.D.,  at  Nicea,  in 
Asia,  not  far  from  Constantinople.  Thus  the  first 
great  (Ecumenical  Council  was  called  into  being. 
After  long  deliberation  this  council  issued  an 
elaborated  confession  of  faith  known  as  the  Nicene 
Creed.  This  creed  differs  from  the  earlier  creed 
chiefly  in  its  fuller  definition  of  the  Person  of 
Christ.  As  against  Arianism  Christ  was  declared 
to  be  "begotten  of  the  Father,  the  only  begotten 
that  is  of  the  essence  of  the  Father,  God  of 
God,  Light  of  Light,  very  God  of  very  God,  be- 
gotten not  made,  being  of  one  substance  with  the 
Father,  who  for  us  men  was  incarnate  and  made 
man." 

In  the  Nicene  definition  of  Christ,  which  finally 
prevailed  in  consequence  of  the  labours  and  ability 
of  Athanasius,  Clement's  principle  that  God  had 
actually  revealed  in  Christ  His  presence  in  the  world 
triumphed.  This  was  the  meaning  of  the  phrase 
"of  one  substance  with  the  Father."  It  was,  how- 
ever, in  a  way,  a  sad  triumph,  for  it  was  now  only 
a  principle  involved  in  a  creed,  to  be  accepted  as 
having  once  taken  place,  rather  than  a  warm 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  93 

experience  of  Goffs  presence  induced  by  the  fad:  of 

Christ's  incarnation. 

Although  the  Nicene  Fathers  condemned  to  per- 
dition in  vigorous  language  all  who  did  not  believe 
this  creed,  the  controversy  raged  hotly  for  the  next 
fifty  years.  Nearly  half  of  the  empire  was  Arian, 
and  about  half  of  the  time  during  that  century  an 
Arian  emperor  occupied  the  throne.  The  bitter 
struggle  of  these  years  enhanced  in  men's  minds  the 
necessity  of  orthodox  belief,  and  called  their  atten- 
tion further  and  further  away  from  living  expe- 
rience. 

Finally,  in  the  year  381,  Theodosius  I.  (the 
Great)  called  another  council — the  First  Council 
of  Constantinople — which  reaffirmed  the  Nicene 
definition  of  Christ's  nature,  and  defined  the  source 
and  functions  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  declaring  that  He 
proceeded  from  the  Father. 

At  last  Arianism  spent  itself,  and  the  orthodox 
view  prevailed.  The  Nicene  Creed  had  asserted 
both  the  human  and  divine  natures  of  Christ,  and 
Christian  speculation  which,  alas!  usually  means 
Christian  controversy,  next  turned  its  attention  to 
the  relation  of  these  natures  to  each  other.  This 
gave  rise  to  what  is  called  the  Monophysite  (i.e.  the 


94          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

one-nature)  controversy.  To  some  the  divine  na- 
ture seemed  the  more  important,  and  in  their  eyes 
it  eclipsed  the  other.  These  called  Mary  the 
Mother  of  God.  Others,  of  whom  the  name  of 
Nestorius  is  best  known,  denounced  this  phrase  and 
proposed  the  term  "Mother  of  Christ."  A  council 
called  to  determine  this  matter  met  at  Ephesus  in 
the  year  431,  but  the  pearl  of  Christian  charity  had 
so  dissolved  in  the  acid  of  doctrine  that  the  dissent- 
ing Fathers  first  fell  violently  foul  of  one  another, 
then  split  into  two  councils,  each  of  which  anathe- 
matized the  other. 

The  Council  of  Chalcedon,  called  in  451  to  settle 
the  matter,  endeavored  to  define  the  indefinable  by 
declaring  that  Christ  possessed  both  a  human  and 
a  divine  nature,  which  are  not  converted  the  one 
into  the  other,  and  are  not  confused  the  one  with 
the  other ;  and  that  in  spite  of  this  duality  of  nature 
Christ's  person  is  a  unity.  Like  many  a  Christian 
since,  they  held  that  the  human  and  divine  are  dis- 
tinct and  incompatible.  They  felt  sure,  too,  that 
they  could  define  the  limits  of  the  two,  and  so  fell 
into  contradictions. 

Naturally,  this  decree  was  never  accepted  by  the 
Monophysite  or  the  Nestorian  Churches.  This 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  95 

creed,  instead  of  uniting,  for  ever  divided  the 
Church.  The  Armenians,  most  of  the  Syrians,  the 
Egyptians,  and  the  Abyssinians,  never  accepted  it, 
and  were  thus  for  ever  separated  from  the  rest  of 
the  Church.  These  Christians,  widely  separated  in 
territory  and  divided  by  language,  have  developed 
differently.  Their  Churches,  like  that  of  England, 
have  each  a  national  colouring  and  an  independent 
development. 

After  this  separation  the  Greek  Church,  as  that 
of  the  Byzantine  Empire  is  called,  continued  her 
natural  course.  At  a  second  Council  of  Constan- 
tinople, in  553,  the  teachings  of  Theodore  of 
Mopsuestia,  the  real  thinker  of  the  two-nature  party, 
were  condemned,  and  at  a  third  Council  of  Con- 
stantinople, in  680,  the  logical  consequences  of  the 
Council  of  Chalcedon,  which  had  asserted  that 
Christ  had  two  natures,  were  accepted,  and  it  was 
asserted  that  He  possessed  two  wills,  one  human 
and  one  divine.  Finally,  a  second  Council  of  Nicea, 
in  787,  sanctioned  images  or  pictures  in  the 
churches. 

Hand  in  hand  with  the  movement  which  brought 
the  use  of  images  into  the  churches  had  come  the 
belief  in  the  efficacy  of  the  invocation  of  saints.  In 


96          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

all  parts  of  Christendom  heathen  deities,  baptized 
as  Christian  saints,  continued  to  be  invoked.  As  in 
western  Europe  one  finds  many  a  Teutonic  deity 
wearing  the  cloak  of  a  saint,  so  in  Palestine  and 
Syria  many  a  Semitic  Baal  turns  up  as  St.  George 
or  some  other  saint.  At  the  same  spot  these  old 
Baals  are  often  worshipped  by  Mohammedans  as 
wells  or  intercessors.  So  all  over  Christendom  old 
ideas  continued  under  Christian  names. 

In  the  history  of  creed-making  we  see  the  ten- 
dency to  lay  stress  on  opinion  rather  than  on  life 
and  character,  which  began  in  the  early  controversy 
:  with  the  Gnostics,  carried  to  its  logical  issue.     As 
the  centuries  passed,  the  emphasis  on  correctness  of 

*l*IMMMMHMHHHgMB 

belief  increased,  and  was  accompanied  by  a  corre- 
sponding emphasis  on  correctness  of  ritual.  As  the 
estimate  of  these  things  increased,  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  presence  of  God  as  a  living  Being, 
speaking  to  His  Church  now,  was  lost.  The  East- 
ern Christians  believe  in  the  divine  nature  of  Christ. 
They  accept  the  inspiration  of  the  holy  apostles; 
they  even  believe  that  God  inspired  the  Fathers  of 
Nicea,  and  the  Greeks,  those  of  Chalcedon;  but 
that  He  can  inspire  now,  they  do  not  believe.  Men, 
if  they  would  be  saved,  must  accept  the  old  dogmas, 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  97 

and  worship  in  the  ways  prescribed  by  the  old  ritual. 
The  living  Voice  which  once  spoke  is  silent,  and  to 
depart  from  the  commands  it  once  gave  is  death. 

One  may  ask  how  it  has  been  possible  for  a 
Church  that  produced  a  Clement  and  an  Athanasius 
to  become  so  dead.  It  must  be  remembered  that 
even  in  the  best  of  communities  it  is  easy  to  hoard 
our  faith 

"In  mouldy  parchments,  while  our  tender  spirits  flee 
The  rude  grasp  of  that  great  impulse" 

which  drove  our  ancestors  to  heroic  deeds  and  to 
sublime  experience.  The  hardest  of  all  things  to 
perpetuate  is  a  living  experience  of  God.  This  is 
doubly  true  of  a  community  whose  civilization  is 
steadily  declining,  as  was  the  case  with  the  Eastern 
Empire.  By  the  fourth  century  the  creative  vitality 
of  the  Roman  genius  was  already  spent,  and  al- 
though the  Eastern  Empire  survived  the  shock  of 
the  barbarian  hordes  in  the  fifth  century  under  which 
the  Western  Empire  went  down,  its  creative  genius 
did  not  survive.  It  is  true  that  in  the  sixth  century 
the  age  of  Justinian  was  outwardly  a  flourishing 
period,  but  it  was  not  a  creative  one,  and  in  the  next 
century  Mohammedanism  swept  over  the  territories 
of  most  of  the  Monophysite  Churches,  and  robbed 
7 


98          THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

even  the  Greek  Church  of  all  her  Syrian  territory. 
For  a  time  the  Arab,  eager  for  knowledge,  out- 
stripped the  citizens  of  the  Eastern  Empire  in 
learning  and  civilization,  but  this  creative  period, 
depressing  to  the  Christians  while  it  lasted,  soon 
waned,  and  left  this  section  of  the  Church  exposed 
to  the  barbarous  bigotry  of  unenlightened  Islam. 
The  Eastern  Empire  held  out  against  Mohammed- 
anism until  1453,  but  during  all  these  centuries  it 
had  only  vitality  enough  to  resist  disintegration. 
Spiritually  it  was  living  on  the  heritage  of  the  past. 
No  new  spiritual  impulse  was  felt.  Ignorance  set- 
tled down  over  priesthood  and  people.  Superstition 
degraded  faith.  As  in  the  West,  the  theory  of 
Transubstantiation,  i.e.,  the  theory  that  the  bread 
and  wine  are  actually  turned  into  the  body  and 
blood  of  Christ,  was  accepted.  The  ceremonies  of 
the  Church  were  thought  to  be  efficacious  by  a  kind 
of  higher  magic,  and  Christianity  gradually  became 
only  less  unintelligent  than  Mohammedanism.  One 
sees  the  effect  of  all  this  today  in  that  seething  hot- 
bed of  zeal  which  is  not  according  to  knowledge — 
the  modern  Jerusalem — where  Greek  Christians, 
Armenian,  Coptic  (Egyptian),  Abyssinian,  and  Syr- 
ian Christians,  together  with  eighteen  orders  of 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  99 

Roman  Catholics  not  altogether  friendly  to  one 
another,  as  well  as  many  cranky  Protestants,  form 
with  Jews  and  Mohammedans  the  most  religious 
mass  of  unregenerate  people  on  the  face  of  the 
earth.  Religion  as  ceremony  and  ritual,  as  tithing 
mint,  anise,  and  cummin,  as  visiting  and  kissing 
places  where  the  feet  of  men  in  whom  the  Holy 
Spirit  really  dwelt,  once  trod,  flourishes  with  all 
that  vigour  which  competition  begets.  In  no  place 
in  the  world  are  knees  more  often  bent,  or  prayers 
more  often  repeated;  but  probably  in  no  place  in 
the  world  is  there  less  of  that  broad  Christian 
charity  and  gentle  goodness  which  we  instinctively 
associate  with  the  name  of  Christ.  In  its  place  one 
finds  a  hatred  fostered  by  ecclesiastical  rivalry  which 
not  infrequently  results  in  fighting  and  sometimes 
in  murder. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  have  not  been 
many  pure  and  holy  lives  in  all  these  churches 
throughout  the  centuries;  nor  would  I  imply  that 
there  are  not  many  such  in  them  now,  even  in  Jeru- 
salem. In  all  Christian  history  there  has  been,  as 
David  Scull  puts  it,1  an  experience  of  the  nearness 
of  God  in  the  soul,  together  with  a  belief  in  the  far- 
1  Union  with  God,  pp.  28,  99. 


IOO        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

offness  of  God  in  the  mind.  This  experience  has 
kept  the  Christian  life  real.  The  modern  Russian 
peasant  is  an  example  of  this.  I  do  not  mean, 
accordingly,  to  imply  that  even  in  Abyssinia  the 
people  are  not  the  better  for  having  the  form  of 
Christianity  which  prevails  there  than  they  would 
be  without  any ;  but  I  do  mean  to  say  that  the  East- 
ern Church  as  a  whole  is  a  sad  object-lesson  as  to 
what  any  Christianity  will  become  which  loses  faith 
in  the  continual  presence  of  the  living  voice  of  God, 
or  that  makes  the  mistake  of  laying  more  stress  on 
orthodoxy  of  opinion  than  upon  actual  Christian 
experience  and  a  Christlike  life.  The  Eastern 
Church  is  but  the  fossil  of  a  once  living  giant.  Its 
passion  of  experience  has  passed;  it  has  cooled  into 
mere  formalism.  Its  face  is  set  toward  the  past, 
and  the  hand  of  that  past  rests  upon  it.  It  makes 
no  provision,  as  even  the  Roman  Church  does,  for 
hearing  the  voice  of  God  in  the  present.  Conse- 
quently the  fires  have  gone  out ;  only  here  and  there 
a  few  embers  are  smouldering.  As  one  walks  its 
aisles  he  treads  as  about  the  crater  of  an  extinct 
volcano.  He  remembers  the  fires  which  burned  in 
such  souls  as  those  of  Ignatius,  the  Montanists — 
Clement,  Origen,  Athanasius,  the  Gregories,  Basil, 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  EASTERN   CHURCH  IOI 

and  Chrysostom — indeed,  the  lava  which  once  came 
hot  from  such  fires  he  sees  cooled  and  hardened 
into  the  rock  of  ancient  custom  all  about  him.  Its 
theology  receives  no  enlargement  from  present 
experience. 

Or  to  change  the  figure,  the  Eastern  Church  is 
like  some  Oriental  rivers,  which  spring  glorious 
and  free  from  a  mountain  spring  and  flow  out  into 
the  desert,  receiving  no  tributaries  except  near  the 
source.  These  rivers  soon  become  turbid  as  they 
flow  through  the  sands;  they  grow  smaller  and 
smaller  as  their  waters  are  absorbed  by  the  thirsty 
soil  until  they  disappear  altogether.  Any  Chris- 
tianity  that  is  to  be  kept  alive  must  receive  new 
accessions  of  the  Water  of  Life  from  the  Heavenly 
Source  with  each  passing  year;  its  fields  must  be 
continually  fructified  from  above.  It  must  live  in 
constant  realization  of  the  promise :  "Lo,  I  am  with 
you  alway,"  or  it  may  soon  be  said  of  it:  "Thou 
hast  a  name  that  thou  livest,  but  art  dead." 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE  IN  THE  WESTERN  CHURCH 

THE  conflict  with  heresy,  especially  with  Gnostic 
heresy,  which,  as  noted  above,  produced  such  im- 
portant effects  upon  the  Eastern  Church,  affected 
the  Western  Church  in  like  manner.  During  the 
centuries  before  the  Council  of  Chalcedon,  the  two 
sections  of  Christendom  waged  the  war  against 
heresy  as  a  united  army,  and  were  not  conscious 
of  fundamental  separation.  Indeed,  at  Chalcedon, 
in  451,  the  Roman  P'ope  or  Bishop  exerted  a  para- 
mount influence  in  the  wording  of  the  decree  of 
the  Council. 

Notwithstanding  this  external  unity  there  were, 
even  in  the  early  days,  fundamental  differences  of 
tendency  in  the  two  sections  which  ultimately  trans- 
formed the  churches  of  these  respective  parts  of  the 
world  into  separate  organizations,  whose  aims  and 
ideals  were  not  in  all  respects  identical.  The  East 
was  given  more  to  speculation,  the  West  to  organi- 
zation. In  the  East  conformity  to  abstract  princi- 
102 


MESSAGE  IN   THE   WESTERN   CHURCH          IO3 

pies  possessed  for  all  minds  a  great  charm ;  in  the 
West  the  paramount  interest  was  in  practical  ad- 
ministration. Indeed,  such  practical  administration 
as  the  Eastern  Church  exhibited  in  dealing  with  the 
Gnostics  she  appeared  to  have  obtained,  in  impulse 
at  least,  from  the  West,  for  it  was  at  Rome  that  the 
earliest  confession  of  faith  which  we  can  trace  was 
adopted.  This  was  the  formula  which  afterwards 
developed  into  the  Apostles'  Creed,  and  which,  as 
we  noted  in  the  last  chapter,  was  the  beginning  of 
this  administrative  method  of  dealing  with  heresy, 
and  was  the  basis  upon  which  the  creeds  of  the 
councils  were  erected. 

The  writer  who  first  formulated  the  ideas  which 
were  destined  to  prevail  in  the  West  was  Irenaeus 
(d.  202).  Unlike  Clement  of  Alexandria,  his  con- 
temporary, Irenaeus  had  no  use  for  philosophy.  He 
saw  no  divine  revelation  except  that  recorded  in  the 
Scriptures. 

The  thought  which  Irenaeus  made  fundamental 
was  thedoctrine  of  the^  "deposit/"  or  the  doctrine  of 
"Tradition"  (cf..  Her.  iii.  3).  In  substance  the  doc- 
trine is  this:  Christ  delivered  to  His  Apostles  cer- 
tain doctrines;  they  in  turn  delivered  them  to  the 
bishops  of  the  churches  which  they  founded ;  these 


IO4        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

bishops  have  in  turn  delivered  them  to  their  suc- 
cessors down  to  the  present  time.  In  the  great 
churches  of  the  principal  cities  of  the  Empire,  where 
the  succession  from  the  Apostles  has  been  contin- 
uous, and  where  any  deviation  from  the  primitive 
standard  would,  on  account  of  the  prominent  posi- 
tion of  the  Church,  be  more  quickly  observed  than 
in  an  obscure  out-of-the-way  congregation,  the 
genuine  form  of  Christianity  may  be  found.  This 
line  of  reasoning,  Irenaeus  urged,  made  it  clear  that 
the  normative  form  of  Christianity  would  be  found 
in  the  church  at  Rome,  for  that  church  had  been 
founded  by  the  two  most  glorious  Apostles,  Peter 
and  Paul,  and  as  Rome  was  the  capital  of  the  world, 
Christians  from  all  parts  of  the  world  often  met 
there,  and  any  deviation  from  the  correct  standard 
would  be  more  readily  detected  and  corrected  there 
than  elsewhere.  Other  churches  are,  then,  in  pos- 
session of  the  true  faith  in  so  far  as  they  are  in 
agreement  with  the  Church  of  Rome.  This  doc- 
trine of  Irenaeus  was  epoch-making;  it  swayed  the 
whole  future. 

In  reality  it  was  simply  a  development  by  a 
practical  administrator  of  the  doctrine  which  we 
previously  noted  in  the  Epistles  to  Timothy,  that 


MESSAGE  IN   THE   WESTERN    CHURCH          IO5 

the  "faith  is  to  be  kept,"  and  that  which  has  been 
"received"  is  to  be  "committed  to  faithful  men." 
Thinking,  as  Irenaeus  did,  that  these  epistles  were 
from  St.  Paul,  he  had  good  precedent  for  his  doc- 
trine of  tradition. 

The  theological  defence  of  this  doctrine  of  tradi- 
tion should  have  been  the  belief  that  God  is  remote 
from  the  world;  that  Christ,  Who  has  ascended  to 
Him,  is  also  now  far  away;  and  that  the  only 
authoritative  voice  which  can  reach  the  Christian  is 
the  distant  echo,  through  tradition,  of  the  voice  of 
the  once  present  Christ.  But,  strange  to  say, 
Irenaeus  did  not  hold  this  view  of  God.  He  is 
on  this  point  in  general  harmony  with  Clement 
of  Alexandria,  and  when  he  is  called  upon  to 
give  a  reason  for  the  Incarnation,  he  declared  it 
to  be  "that  we  might  become  gods" — an  answer 
that  would  place  him  in  the  front  rank  of  the 
mystics.  The  successors  of  Irenaeus  in  the  West 
were  constitutionally  predisposed  to  be  inoculated 
with  the  germ  of  his  doctrine  of  tradition,  while 
to  the  germ  of  his  mystical  thought  they  were 
immune. 

Tertullian  (d.  230)  of  Carthage,  a  younger  con- 
temporary of  Irenaeus,  in  his  book,  The  Prescription 


106       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

of  Heresy,  elaborated  and  made  more  forcible 
Irenseus's  doctrine  of  tradition.  Tertullian  was  a 
lawyer  of  eminence,  and  treats  the  matter  as  a 
problem  of  law. 

The  Apostles,  he  claimed,  handed  on  what  Christ 
taught,  keeping  back  nothing.  They  delivered  the 
entire  "deposit"  to  their  successors.  Heretics  could 
not  claim,  therefore,  that  there  had  come  to  them 
any  part  of  the  Apostolic  "deposit"  which  had  not 
come  to  the  orthodox  bishop.  This  "deposit"  of 
doctrine  is  the  Church's  property.  Her  title  to  it 
is  secure  because  of  the  Apostolic  deed  of  gift,  and 
because  of  long  possession.  The  heretics  are  tres- 
passers on  the  Church's  domain.  They  have  no 
right  there.  Heresy  is  self-will  instigated  by  philo- 
sophy. Athens,  declared  Tertullian,  had  nothing  to 
do  with  Jerusalem,  the  Academy  with  the  Church, 
or  heretics  with  Christians.  These  trespassers  the 
Church  has  a  right  to  eject. 

Later  in  life  Tertullian,  in  spite  of  his  argument, 
became  a  heretic  himself.  When  the  Montanists 
were  struggling  against  an  official  ministry  for  the 
old  liberty  of  "prophesying,"  he  sided  with  the 
Montanists.  He  had  in  this  book,  however,  spoken 
so  in  accord  with  the  genius  of  the  Western  Church, 


MESSAGE  IN   THE   WESTERN    CHURCH  IO7 

that,  although  that  Church  repudiated  the  author, 
she  continued  to  regard  his  book  as  one  of  the  great 
buttresses  of  her  charter. 

The  next  great  statesman  of  the  Western  Church 
was  Cyprian  (d.  258).  Cyprian  lived  through  the 
Decian  persecution  of  the  years  250-251.  That 
persecution  was  the  fiercest  through  which  the 
Church  had  ever  passed.  The  Emperor  set  himself 
to  stamp  out  Christianity  throughout  his  dominions, 
and  compelled  all  his  subjects — or  at  least  any  who 
were  suspected  of  being  Christians — to  prove  that 
they  were  not  by  going  before  a  magistrate  and  se- 
curing a  certificate  that  the  magistrate  had  seen  them 
offer  incense  to  the  statue  of  the  emperor.  In  many 
districts  martyrdom  was  the  alternative.  While 
many  Christians  suffered  martyrdom,  many  offered 
the  incense  and  secured  the  certificates.  Decius,  in 
251,  fell  in  a  battle  with  the  Goths,  and  his  suc- 
cessor did  not  continue  the  persecution.  Afterwards 
hosts  of  the  "lapsed,"  as  those  who  had  obtained 
the  certificates  were  called,  wished  to  come  back  into 
the  Church,  and  great  was  the  difference  of  opinion 
as  to  whether  they  should  be  received.  Cyprian 
had  himself  withdrawn  from  Carthage  and  gone 
into  hiding  during  the  persecution,  and  was  severely 


IO8       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

criticised  by  some  of  his  presbyters  for  so  doing. 
The  differences  between  Cyprian  and  his  congre- 
gation and  elders  over  these  matters  led  him  to 
entertain  in  the  end  some  views  of  the  Christian 
ministry  which  were  as  much  in  accord  with  the 
genius  of  Latin  Christianity  as  Irenaeus's  doctrine 
of  the  "deposit"  had  been,  and  these  views  ulti- 
mately transformed  the  Christian  ministry  into  a 
priesthood.  Cyprian's  views,  as  they  finally  took 
shape  were,  briefly,  as  follows: — 

"The. bishop  is  the  representative  of  Christ  in  the  com- 
munity over  which  he  rules.  He  has  accordingly,  over 
that  single  congregation,  the  authority  which  Christ  pos- 
sesses over  the  Church  Universal.  He  is  the  viceroy  over 
that  portion  of  God's  heritage.  But  Christ  holds  this 
position  of  authority  because  He  represents  His  people  in 
the  presence  of  God;  because  He  is  their  high  priest;  be- 
cause He  has  offered  for  them  His  own  body  and  blood. 
The  bishop,  therefore,  as  the  representative  of  Christ,  is 
the  priest  of  God,  who  in  the  Eucharist  offers  to  God 
the  Lord's  passion,  and  truly  discharges  the  office  of 
Christ  .  .  .  Above  all,  the  bishop  is  the  representative  of 
Christ  because  he  is  the  judge-  to  whom  belongs  the  power 
of  punishing  or  remitting  sins  .  .  .  They  only  who  are 
set  over  the  Church  .  .  .  can  remit  sins." 

So  declared  Cyprian.  Of  course  this  doctrine  was 
not  accepted  by  all  the  Church  during  Cyprian's 
lifetime,  but  in  the  course  of  a  century  or  two  it  be- 
came the  conception  of  the  Church  at  large,  and 


MESSAGE   IN    THE    WESTERN    CHURCH  IOO, 

transformed  the  simple  Christian  ministry  into  a 
veritable  priesthood.1 

The  greatest  organizer  of  the  system  of  thought 
in  the  Western  Church  was,  however,  Augustine, 
Bishop  of  Hippo,  in  North  Africa  (d.  430  A.D.).  We 
cannot  stop  to  review  Augustine's  interesting  bio- 
graphy. His  Christian  mother,  his  youth  capti- 
vated by  sensually  immoral  pleasure  and  varied  by 
the  trial  of  many  philosophies,  his  failure  as  a 
teacher  of  rhetoric  in  Rome,  and  his  most  successful 
career  at  Milan,  and  conversion  under  the  preach- 
ing of  Ambrose,  are  all  known.  In  character  and 
thought  Augustine  exerts  upon  a  modern  man  the 
most  opposite  influences.  His  Confessions  are  a 
unique  and  attractive  picture  of  himself,  in  spite  of 
their  theological  bias;  they  reveal  piety  of  unusual 
genuineness,  devotion  of  unalloyed  excellence,  and 
a  mysticism  which  links  us  to  him  in  heart.  On 
the  other  hand,  his  final  system  of  thought  is  the 
Magna  Charta  of  Catholicism,  and  is  all  that  a 
modern  Protestant  abhors. 

This  system  of  thought  was  developed  dur- 
ing Augustine's  struggles  with  three  heresies — 

1  See,  for  more  details,  Lindsay,  The  Church  and  the  Min- 
istry in  the  Early  Christian  Centuries,  pp.  290-319. 


I IO       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

the  Manichaeans,  the  Donatists,  and  the  Pelagians. 

Manichaeism  was  founded  by  a  Persian  named 
Mani,  who  was  born  a  little  more  than  a  hundred 
years  before  Augustine,  and  taught  at  Babylon. 
Mani  endeavoured  to  found  a  new  creed  which 
should  combine  the  best  in  the  religious  systems 
with  which  he  was  acquainted.  He  adopted  the 
Zoroastrian  conception  of  two  gods,  the  Hindoo 
belief  in  the  transmigration  of  souls,  the  Jewish 
belief  in  angels  and  demons,  and  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  His  religion  spread  as  far 
east  as  China,  and  west  to  the  Roman  Empire. 
Augustine  before  his  conversion  had  at  one  time 
been  a  Manichaean,  and  in  some  important  respects 
never  shook  off  its  doctrines.  Clearly  Manichseism 
contained  elements  which  were  not  in  primitive 
Christianity.  It  denied  that  the  Church  was  the 
sole  depository  of  the  truth. 

In  opposition  to  the  Manichaeans  Augustine 
revived  and  extended  Irenaeus's  doctrine  of  tradi- 
tion. Truth  is  a  deposit  entrusted  to  the  Episco- 
pate— so  Augustine  argued.  It  is  found  only  in  the 
Church.  To  the  sanction  of  the  Church  even  Scrip- 
ture owes  its  authority.  The  Church  for  which 
Augustine  claimed  so  much  was  not  the  consentient 


MESSAGE   IN    THE    WESTERN    CHURCH  III 

reason  of  those  who  are  enlightened  by  the  Divine 
Teacher  speaking  within  their  souls ;  it  was  the  insti- 
tution of  which  the  Episcopate  holds  the  charter. 
This  institution  was  entrusted  by  a  power  external 
to  itself  with  a  "deposit"  which  was  the  only  authori- 
tative source  of  truth.  The  "notes"  or  signs  by 
which  this  Church  may  be  known  are,  as  Augustine 
pictured  it  to  the  Manichaeans,  its  power,  its  splen- 
dour, its  miraculous  gifts,  its  vast  extent,  and  its 
long  succession  of  bishops  extending  from  the  See 
of  Peter. 

This  idea  of  the  Church  is  further  developed  in 
his  controversy  with  the  Donatists.  The  Donatists 
as  a  party  had  emerged  in  the  controversy  over  the 
"lapsed,"  and  took  their  name  from  a  bishop  of 
Carthage.  They  held  that  the  Church  consisted 
only  of  those  known  or  believed  to  be  faithful.  As 
the  Church  at  large  received  again  into  its  fold  those 
of  the  "lapsed"  who  were  penitent,  the  Donatists 
separated  themselves  from  the  rest  and  claimed  that 
they  were  the  only  true  Church.  Augustine  found 
many  of  them  in  his  diocese,  and  they  were  natu- 
rally obnoxious  to  him  as  the  practical  administrator 
of  a  See. 

In  opposition  to  these  Augustine  asserted  that  the 


112       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Church  by  its  very  nature  must  include  the  unfaith- 
ful and  the  wicked — that  the  tares  must  grow  with 
the  wheat.  The  Church  was  God's  instrument  for 
ruling  the  world,  and  It  was  the  divine  will  that  all 
should  come  into  it;  if  they  would  not  come  of  them- 
selves, they  must  be  forced  to  come;  if  the  Church 
had  not  the  power  to  do  this,  then  the  State  should 
come  to  her  aid. 

There  underlay  this  position  the  thought  that  God 
is  far  from  His  world,  and  that  He  is,  through  the 
Church,  as  a  vicegerent,  ruling  the  world  as  a 
distant  province  of  His  dominions.  Augustine  had 
accepted,  too,  the  dictum  of  Cyprian,  that  he  who 
had  not  the  Church  for  his  mother  could  not  have 
God  for  his  Father,  but  he  had  modified  it,  for, 
according  to  Augustine,  not  every  one  who  has  the 
Church  for  his  mother  has  God  for  his  Father. 
Final  salvation  is  in  the  hands  of  God,  and  can  be 
known  only  at  the  last  day.  Even  of  those  within 
the  Church  only  the  elect  will  then  be  saved. 

Before  the  Donatist  controversy  was  ended,  Pela- 
gius,  a  monk  born  in  Britain,  then  the  extreme  west 
of  the  civilized  world,  went  to  Africa,  and  Augustine 
had  the  Pelagian  controversy  on  his  hands.  Pela- 
gius  denied  that  all  men  had  sinned  in  Adam;  de- 


MESSAGE   IN    THE    WESTERN    CHURCH  113 

clared  that  Adam's  sin  affected  Adam  alone;  that 
children  came  into  the  world  in  the  same  condition 
that  Adam  was  before  his  fall;  that  unbaptized 
children  were  saved;  and  that  the  human  will  had 
power  to  turn  away  from  evil  and  follow  righteous- 
ness, or,  if  necessary,  God  would  grant  His  especial 
aid  to  its  assistance.  Such  views  robbed  a  church 
such  as  Augustine  had  come  to  believe  in  of  all 
excuse  for  existence. 

It  was  this  teaching  that  called  forth  Augustine's 
doctrine  of  Original  Sin.  Not  that  this  doctrine 
was  entertained  by  him  now  for  the  first  time,  but  it 
was  now  heightened  and  given  vehement  expression. 
According  to  this  dogma  humanity  is  absolutely 
separated  from  God  by  Adam's  sin.  The  whole 
human  race  was  implicated  in  that  sin,  has  in  con- 
sequence fallen  under  the  wrath  of  God,  and  is 
destined  to  endless  woe.  Humanity  has  not  been 
redeemed  by  Christ,  only  the  elect  have  been  re- 
deemed. Sin  utterly  destroyed  the  divine  image  in 
man;  only  a  creative  act  of  grace  can  renew  it. 
This  creative  act  takes  place  in  the  elect  at  the  time 
of  baptism,  and  by  it  the  divine  image  is  restored. 
Without  baptism  man  is  only  a  highly  gifted  animal. 
This  doctrine  of  baptismal  regeneration  was  an  inno- 


114       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

vation,  and  though  it  ultimately  prevailed  because 
so  much  in  harmony  with  the  genius  of  Latin 
Christianity,  it  found  in  some  quarters  strenuous 
opponents. 

In  Augustine's  view  Christ  had  come  to  the  world 
to  establish  the  Church,  and  by  His  death  had  re- 
deemed the  elect.  He  had  now  gone  to  the  distant 
heaven  where  God  dwelt,  and  had  left  His  work  to 
the  Church.  Humanity  must  be  swept  into  that 
Church,  or  it  had  no  hope.  Within  the  Church  an 
impalpable  substance  called  "grace"  gave  repen- 
tance and  brought  salvation  to  the  elect.  The  rest 
of  humanity  was  given  over  to  a  future  punishment, 
which,  in  Augustine's  view,  was  more  horrible,  if 
possible,  than  that  conceived  by  Mohammed.1 

In  Augustine  the  Christian  message  in  the  West- 
ern Church  received  the  form  which  it  was  to  hold 
for  a  thousand  years,  and  which  it  holds  in  much  of 
Christendom  till  the  present  day. 

After  Augustine  there  settled  over  the  Western 
world  an  increasing  cloud  of  ignorance.  Hordes  of 
barbarians  overran  the  land,  sweeping  before  them 
what  little  culture  there  was.  At  the  Council  of 

iFor  greater  detail,  see  Allen,  Continuity  of  Christian 
Thought,  pp.  143-172. 


MESSAGE  IN   THE  WESTERN    CHURCH 

Toledo,  in  Spain,  in  587,  the  creed  of  the  First 
Council  of  Constantinople  was  modified,  so  as  to 
declare  that  the  Holy  Spirit  proceeded  from  the  Son 
as  well  as  from  the  Father.  The  Church  held  her 
charter  from  the  Son,  and  thus  all  gifts  of  the  Spirit 
were  brought  under  the  Church's  control.  The 
Greek  Church  never  accepted  this  addition. 

During  these  centuries,  too,  there  developed  the 
doctrine  of  Purgatory.  Everybody  held  still  the  old 
notion  that  the  dead  passed  the  time  till  a  general 
resurrection  in  the  under-world,  and  gradually  the 
idea  grew  up  that  that  time  might  be  made  profitable 
for  the  purification  of  imperfect  souls.  The  priests 
were  quick  to  see  that  this  could  be  turned  to  the 
advantage  of  the  Church,  and  persuaded  the  people 
that  the  purifying  tortures  of  this  subterranean 
sojourn  might  be  shortened  by  gifts  to  the  Church. 
Thus  the  organization  which  Augustine  had  done 
so  much  to  erect  added  to  its  domain  the  power  of 
the  world  to  come. 

Another  step  in  the  realization  of  Augustine's  idea 
of  a  Church  was  taken  in  the  year  800,  when  Pope 
Leo  III.  placed  the  crown  of  a  so-called  Roman 
Empire  on  the  head  of  Charlemagne,  and  thus  as- 
serted the  superiority  of  the  Church  over  the  State. 


Il6       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

As  the  ignorance  of  the  age  increased,  Radbertus, 
a  monk,  proposed  in  the  ninth  century  the  doctrine 
of  Transubstantiation,  i.e.,  that  the  bread  and  wine 
become  when  consecrated  the  actual  body  and  blood 
of  Christ.  The  alchemists  of  the  period  believed  it 
possible  to  turn  lead  into  gold,  although  they  did 
not  succeed  in  doing  it,  and  it  was  accordingly  easy 
to  believe  that  bread  and  wine  could  be  turned  into 
flesh  and  blood.  So  this  view  was  generally  ac- 
cepted after  a  short  time,  and  completed  Cyprian's 
theory  that  in  the  Eucharist  the  priest  actually 
offered  a  sacrifice. 

Even  from  this  imperfect  sketch  it  will  be  seen 
that  from  Irenseus  onward  the  constant  tendency 
had  been  to  make  the  Christian  message  the  charter 
of  the  Church  as  an  institution,  and  to  herald  to 
men  the  fact  that  here  only  was  salvation  to  be 
found.  And  yet  until  the  approach  of  the  year  1000 
the  Church  failed  to  captivate  the  imagination  of 
Western  Christendom.  Until  then  the  European 
world  was  too  prosperous  to  come  under  priestly 
sway.  The  Church  was  supported  and  tolerated, 
but  the  iron  of  -her  slavery  had  not  entered  into 
men's  souls. 

The  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  changed  all  this. 


MESSAGE   IN    THE    WESTERN    CHURCH  1 1/ 

There  were  fresh  migrations  of  barbarians,  which 
caused  untold  sufferings.  The  Huns  appeared  in 
renewed  numbers  and  overran  the  Prankish  country 
to  the  sea.  The  Northmen  came  down  upon  France 
and  Spain,  and  sweeping  through  the  Mediterranean, 
took  possession  of  Italy.  The  Danes  invaded  and 
conquered  England.  The  Saracens  crossed  from 
North  Africa,  conquered  Sicily,  and  appeared  be- 
fore the  gates  of  Rome.  As  the  year  1000  ap- 
proached millenarian  theories  .prevailed.  It  was 
widely  believed  that  the  world  would  end  with  that 
year.  The  sufferings  caused  by  the  barbarians  were 
thought  to  be  the  signs  which  portended  the  end. 
As  the  dread  year  approached,  men  deeded  their 
property  to  the  Church,  thinking  to  gain  some 
favour  with  God  by  giving  Him  those  material 
things  which  they  themselves  must  soon  lose.  An 
Italian  scholar,  a  friend  of  mine,  tells  me  that  he 
has  seen  one  of  these  original  deeds  of  gift  made 
at  this  time. 

The  year  1000  passed,  and  the  world  still  went 
on,  but  it  was  a  different,  a  more  religious  world. 
Its  conscience  had  been  awakened ;  it  began  to  build 
those  fascinatingly  beautiful  and  solemn  cathedrals 
which  still  delight  and  allure  us. 


Il8       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

When  civilization,  which  the  barbarians  had  for 
a  time  crushed,  began  once  more  to  flourish,  the 
awakened  mind  became  an  ally  of  the  Church,  and 
entered  the  service  of  religion.  Its  first  task  wasjto 
justify  the  dogmas  of  the  Church  to  the  reason.  The 
first  to  enter  this  field  was  Anselm  (1038-1109),  an 
Italian  by  birth,  who,  late  in  life,  became  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury. 

Anselm  set  himself  to  explain  the  Incarnation  in 
his  epoch-making  work,  Cur  Deus  Homo,  and  in 
doing  so  gave  Christendom  for  the  first  time  a 
rational  theory  of  the  Atonement.  For  a  thousand 
years  the  Church  had  got  on  without  any  theory. 
If  any  of  the  Fathers  mentioned  the  subject  (and 
some  of  them  did),  they  had  taken  Christ's  illustra- 
tion of  the  ransom  literally,  and  claimed  that  God 
delivered  Christ  to  Satan  in  order  to  purchase  the 
i  release  of  men  whom  Satan  had  captured.  An- 
selm's  theory  was  based  on  feudal  law.  Man  was 
God's  vassal.  He  owed  God  perfect  fealty,  which 
he  had  failed  to  pay.  As  God  was  infinite,  the  debt 
owed  for  this  failure  was  infinite.  Man  could  not 
pay  it,  for  he  was  finite ;  only  God  could  pay  it.  But 
man  must  pay  it,  for  it  was  man,  not  God,  who 
owed  the  fealty.  If  the  debt  were  not  paid,  man 


MESSAGE  IN   THE   WESTERN    CHURCH          119 

must  eternally  perish.  God's  justice  demanded  this. 
If  he  perished,  God's  love  would  be  thwarted.  Ac- 
cordingly God  became  incarnate  in  Christ,  so  that 
the  conditions  of  the  problem  could  be  satisfied. 
God  and  man  thus  both  paid  the  debt,  and  God's 
love  gave  Christ  as  a  sacrifice  to  God's  justice.  Thus 
the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  as  a  great  legal  or 
governmental  problem  was  brought  into  the  Chris- 
tian message,  and,  whether,  as  in  the  theory  of 
Calvin,  it  has  been  thought  that  Christ  actually  bore 
our  punishment  rather  than  paid  our  debt,  or, 
whether,  as  in  the  theory  of  Grotius,  Christ  was 
believed  to  bear  just  enough  of  God's  wrath  to 
deter  other  provinces  of  God's  dominions  from 
rebelling,  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  rather  than 
the  Incarnation,  has  to  the  present  hour  been 
thought  by  the  majority  of  the  Christians  of  the 
West  to  be  the  heart  of  the  Christian  message. 

Anselm,  however,  did  not  array  this  doctrine 
against  Augustine's  doctrine  of  the  Church,  for  he 
taught  that  the  whole  matter  had  been  turned  over 
to  the  Church  to  administer.  He  had  spoken,  too, 
of  the  Atonement  as  having  infinite  value,  and  as 
being  more  than  an  equivalent  for  the  sins  of  man- 
kind. This  surplus  merit  the  Church  in  after  days 


I2O       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

believed  had  been  turned  over  to  her  to  administer, 
and  it  was  made  the  basis  of  the  sale  of  Indulgences. 

Although  the  work  of  Anselm  strengthened  the 
Church,  it  did  not  make  its  position  intellectually 
secure,  as  the  career  and  work  of  Abelard  soon 
showed.  This  task  of  completing  the  subjugation 
of  the  mind  of  man  to  the  Church  was  left  to  Thomas 
Aquinas  (1227-1274).  For  some  three  centuries, 
from  the  time  of  John  Scotus  Erigena,  the  learned 
Irish  monk,  who  knew  Greek,  and  who  made  known 
to  the  West  something  of  the  Platonic  thought  as 
contained  in  the  works  of  the  pseudo-Dionysius,  the 
Schoolmen  had  had  some  conception  of  Platonic 
ideas.  They  had,  however,  been  ignorant  of  Aris- 
totle until  just  before  the  time  of  Aquinas.  Ibn 
Roshd  (Averroes),  an  Arab  philosopher  of  Spain, 
had  translated  the  works  of  the  great  Greek  into 
Arabic,  and  Alexander  of  Hales  and  Albertus 
Magnus  had  turned  them  from  Arabic  into  Latin. 

With  a  true  instinct  for  practical  utility,  Aquinas 
made  Aristotle  a  kind  of  pope  in  the  scientific  world, 
and  floated  his  famous  theory  of  a  kingdom  of 
nature  and  a  kingdom  of  grace.  The  theory  was 
really  original  with  Albertus  Magnus,  the  teacher 
of  Aquinas,  but  it  was  Aquinas  who  gave  it  its 


MESSAGE  IN   THE   WESTERN   CHURCH          121 

importance  to  the  religious  world.  Interrogating 
nature  through  the  eyes  of  Aristotle,  these  School- 
men conceived  nature  to  be  a  sort  of  hierarchy,  ris- 
ing in  regular  gradation  from  the  lowest  orders  of 
life  till  it  reached  its  culmination  in  man.  Above 
this  kingdom,  and  rising  on  it  as  the  spirit  depends 
on  the  body,  towered  the  kingdom  of  grace,  of  which 
the  Church  was  the  external  embodiment.  The 
Church  arose  as  a  hierarchy  through  the  various 
orders  of  clergy  to  the  Pope,  the  Vicar  of  God  on 
earth,  and  was  continued  by  the  angels  and  arch- 
angels, finding  its  culmination  in  the  throne  of  God. 
These  two  kingdoms  were  believed  everywhere  to 
be  distinct  from  one  another.  The  lower  does  not 
pass  over  into  the  higher ;  it  is  separated  from  it  as 
though  its  outer  vestibule.  The  only  door  opening 
from  one  to  the  other  is  the  Sacrament  of  Baptism, 
by  which  one  who  has  natural  life  receives  a  super- 
natural gift.  These  two  kingdoms  were  thought  to 
correspond  to  the  Empire  and  the  Church.  There 
was  a  natural  theology,  consisting  of  such  religious 
truths  as  could  be  inferred  from  nature,  and  there 
was  a  revealed  theology  which  the  natural  man 
could  never  have  found  out  without  divine  aid.  The 
latter  was  not  contrary  to  reason,  but  simply  above 


122       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

it.  This  theory,  leaving  open  as  it  did  a  field  for 
the  human  mind  to  legitimately  work  in,  and  claim- 
ing that  what  was  beyond  was  likewise  justified  in 
the  perfect  reason  of  God,  gave  the  Church  her 
intellectual  fortress,  and  the  work  of  Aquinas  is 
the  approved  philosophy  of  the  Roman  Church  to 
the  present  hour. 

Rapidly  and  imperfectly  we  have  now  traced  the 
main  outline  of  the  form  which  the  Christian  mes- 
sage took  in  the  West.  We  have  seen  how  the 
practical  workings  of  the  Western  mind  with  the 
genius  for  organization  inherited  from  those  old 
Romans  who  built  the  empire,  constructed  the 
Church,  making  it  a  strong  organization.  This 
organization,  inheriting  the  task  of  the  empire, 
should,  they  thought,  still  rule  the  world  from  the 
banks  of  the  Tiber.  This  was  not  done  all  at  once, 
but  the  drift  was  altogether  that  way,  even  from  the 
start,  although  those  who  took  the  early  steps  prob- 
ably had  no  vision  of  the  goal  towards  which  they 
were  tending.  Notwithstanding  this,  the  progress 
was  steadily  in  this  direction.  We  have  only 
touched  upon  a  few  of  the  mountain-peaks  of  that 
great  range  of  Fathers  who  form  the  watershed  of 
this  great  area,  but  we  have  seen  that  Irenaeus, 


MESSAGE  IN  THE  WESTERN    CHURCH  123 

Tertullian,  Cyprian,  Augustine,  Radbertus,  Leo  III., 
Anselm,  and  Aquinas,  all  belong  to  the  same  great 
range,  and  to  these,  had  time  permitted,  many 
others  might  have  been  added. 

The  substance  of  the  Christian  message  as  it 
prevailed  in  the  West  was,  then,  this :  Adam  had  by 
sin  utterly  lost  all  connection  with  God  his  Creator. 
All  his  descendants  are  held  by  God  morally  respon- 
sible for  Adam's  sin,  and  are  doomed  to  the  most 
hopeless  torment.  In  order  that  a  few  who  are 
elect,  and  are  known  only  to  God,  might  be  saved, 
God  sent  His  Son  into  the  world  to  die.  After 
Christ's  death  He  went  back  to  the  distant  God 
from  whence  He  came.  Before  He  went  away  He 
organized  the  Church  and  made  her  head,  the 
bishop  of  Rome,  His  Vicar  on  the  earth.  To  this 
Church  is  given  the  duty  of  ruling  the  world  and 
of  administering  the  salvation  of  the  elect.  No 
salvation  can  be  had  outside  of  her.  She  represents 
the  kingdom  of  grace  on  the  earth,  which  can  be 
entered  only  through  baptism.  In  other  words,  the 
Christian  message  in  the  Latin  Church  is:  God  is 
far  away,  but  long  ago  He  came  into  the  world  for 
a  few  years,  organized  the  Church,  gave  her  the 
administration  of  His  Spirit  and  all  things  spiritual ; 


124       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

it  is  His  will  that  all  come  into  her.  Such  a  mes- 
sage is  better  than  no  message,  and  it  has  been 
blest  to  many  millions. 

The  Church  in  the  West,  through  the  supremacy 
of  the  Roman  bishop  and  the  conceptions  of  the 
right  of  Rome  to  rule,  which  were  inherited  from 
the  empire,  has  been  preserved  from  such  complete 
crystallization  as  was  suffered  by  the  Church  of  the 
East.  She  has  always  maintained  that  God  could 
still  speak  to  some  one,  and  the  doctrine  of  Papal 
Infallibility,  formulated  within  the  memory  of  some 
of  us,  is  an  assertion  of  the  right  of  the  Pope  to 
free  himself  from  the  fetters  of  the  dead  past  in 
obedience  to  the  living  voice  of  the  Spirit.  The 
'Eastern  Church  represents  utterly  immobile  con- 
servatism. Its  whole  gaze  is  turned  towards  the 
past.  In  contrast,  the  Roman  Church  has  at  least 
the  possibility  of  one  eye  (however  near-sighted 
and  blinded  by  cataract  that  eye  may  be)  open  to 
the  future ;  one  heart  open  to  the  voice  of  the  Spirit 
now. 

The  message  of  Western  Christendom  as  out- 
lined in  the  Church  of  the  Middle  Age  has  remained 
essentially  unchanged  as  to  its  most  important 
features,  even  in  Protestantism.  Protestantism,  it 


MESSAGE  IN   THE   WESTERN   CHURCH          125 

is  true,  asserted  the  right  of  private  judgment,  and 
so  greatly  modified  the  conception  of  the  Church. 
Calvin,  too,  reversed  the  relative  position  of  the 
Church  and  the  Bible.  According  to  Roman  doc- 
trine, the  Church  is  God's  infallible  representative, 
and  Scripture  owes  to  the  Church  its  sanction ;  ac- 
cording to  Calvin — and  it  has  been  accepted  by 
most  Protestants — the  Scriptures  are  God's  infal- 
lible representative,  and  the  Church  owes  to  them 
her  authority. 

This  is  no  doubt  an  important  difference,  but  it 
is  not  so  fundamental  as  it  at  first  appears.  Both 
systems  presuppose  that  God  is  far  removed  from 
the  world  and  from  His  people;  that  all  authorita- 
tive communion  with  Him  long  ago  ceased;  that  a 
standard  of  authority  external  to  the  conscience  is 
necessary;  and  whether  that  standard  is  a  book  or 
an  organization,  however  important  within  limits 
the  question  may  be,  is  beside  this  more  fundamental 
question  a  minor  detail. 

In  Calvinism — and  Calvinism  has  until  within  a 
comparatively  few  years  ruled  by  far  the  larger 
portion  of  the  Protestant  world — the  election  of  a 
few  and  the  damnation  of  the  many  has  been 
preached  in  true  Augustinian  fashion.  In  all  of 


126       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Protestantism,  almost  to  the  present  hour,  the 
central  theme  of  the  Gospel  message  has  been  held 
to  be  a  theory  of  the  Atonement  based  on  a  legal 
scheme  of  debt,  penalty,  or  government — a  scheme 
which  has  drawn  attention  away  from  the  unalloyed 
love  of  God,  and  His  direct  means  and  methods  in 
Christ  and  by  direct  spiritual  contact  of  reaching 
and  moving  the  souls  of  His  children.  Probably, 
however,  the  Christian  message  in  this  form  was 
best  adapted  to  the  majority,  and  certain  it  is  that 
it  has  proved  the  power  of  God  unto  salvation. 

In  tracing,  as  I  have  done,  the  general  trend  of 
the  Christian  message  in  the  West  in  this  brief 
compass,  it  has  been  necessary  to  pass  by  many 
exceptions  to  this  general  trend.  I  have  not  had 
time  to  mention  important  organized  protests  against 
the  prevailing  theology — protests  which  were  also 
assertions  of  the  nearness  of  God  and  His  willing- 
ness still  to  inspire  the  individual.  I  have  said 
nothing  of  the  Montanists  in  the  second  century, 
who,  though  they  began  in  Phrygia,  spread  to  North 
Africa,  and  who  stoutly  asserted  that  God  still 
inspired  them  to  prophesy  as  He  did  the  prophets 
of  old.  I  have  said  nothing  of  the  Cathari  and  the 
sect  of  the  Holy  Spirit  of  the  twelfth  century,  nor 


MESSAGE  IN  THE  WESTERN  CHURCH  127 

of  the  German  Mystics  of  the  thirteenth  and  four- 
teenth centuries.  Time  has  failed  me  to  speak  of 
St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  of  Abelard,  John  Ruysbroek, 
of  Tauler,  of  Eckhardt,  of  Jacob  Boehme,  of  Huss 
and  Wyckliffe,  of  Luther  and  of  Zwingli,  of  Menno 
and  Savonarola,  of  Arminius  and  of  Schwenk- 
feld,  who,  denying  in  different  ways  parts  of  the 
prevailing  theology,  through  their  faith  wrought 
righteousness,  and  some  of  them  subdued  kingdoms. 
Such  as  these  are  proof  that  in  every  generation 
there  was,  as  George  Fox  would  say,  a  righteous 
seed,  or,  to  use  the  words  of  Paul,  "God  left  not 
Himself  without  a  witness." 

Had  we  had  time  for  all  these  exceptions,  how- 
ever, they  would  have  served  but  to  show  that  the 
history  of  the  Western  Church  is  not  an  arid  prairie, 
but  has  many  diversifying  features.  And,  on  the 
whole,  the  consideration  of  these  features  would 
not  change  our  summary  of  the  form  of  the  Chris- 
tian message  in  the  Western  Church.  These 
preachers  scarcely  made  themselves  heard  as  com- 
pared with  the  great  multitude  who  voiced  as  with 
a  great  shout  the  gospel  of  an  absentee  God,  of  an 
infallible  organization,  or  of  an  infallible  book  as 
His  representative,  and  an  artificial  scheme  to  bring 


128       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

men  into  harmony  with  God.  On  the  whole,  this 
was  the  form  the  Christian  message  took  in  the 
West  for  a  thousand  years — the  form,  indeed,  in 
which,  over  large  areas,  it  is  still  proclaimed.  And 
yet,  as  in  the  East,  there  was  also  in  the  West  a 
sense  in  the  feelings  of  the  nearness  of  God  at  the 
very  time  that  men  held  with  their  minds  the  theory 
of  His  far-offness.  This,  in  spite  of  the  prevailing 
theology,  has  kept  Christianity  alive,  and  enabled  it 
to  bear  fruit. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  causes  which  produced  the  Protestant  Re- 
formation were  manifold,  and  numerous  were  the 
men  who  helped  to  give  shape  to  the  Christian 
message  in  Protestantism.  Three  among  these  stand 
out  prominently.  On  account  of  their  pioneer 
work  and  their  commanding  influence,  he  who 
would  become  familiar  with  the  underlying  prin- 
ciples of  the  Protestant  Reformation  must  study 
especially  the  work  of  Martin  Luther,  Huldreich 
Zwingli,  and  John  Calvin. 

Luther,  the  pioneer  of  the  movement,  was  a  man 
of  rich  and  commanding  personality,  but  was  pos- 
sessed of  no  great  power  of  systematic  thought. 
Of  peasant  stock,  Luther's  attitude  to  the  universe 
was  thoroughly  religious  and  practical.  Although 
educated  at  the  University  of  Erfurt,  one  of  the 
centres  of  the  new  humanistic  culture,  he  was  sing- 
ularly untouched  by  the  currents  of  new  thought. 
9  129 


T3O       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Even  the  better  side  of  the  theology  of  the  Catholic 
Church  seems  to  have  been  unknown  to  him.  At 
least,  if  he  knew  it,  it  did  not  control  his  thinking. 

The  peasantry  of  the  time,  like  the  peasantry  of 
any  age,  conceived  of  religion  in  an  objective  and 
crass  way.  God  was  regarded  as  a  terrible  and  an 
angry  judge ;  the  one  thing  needful  in  religion  was 
to  escape  his  wrath.  With  this  desire  Luther 
entered  a  monastery,  but  in  the  life  of  its  secluded 
brotherhood  he  found  no  assurance  that  he  had 
escaped  the  wrath  of  God.  It  was  in  this  mood 
that  he  made  his  great  discovery  as  he  was  study- 
ing Rom.  i  :i/,  which  reads  in  the  Latin  Vulgate 
"For  the  justice  of  God  is  revealed  in  him  from 
;faith  unto  faith."  At  first  he  hated  the  expression, 
feeling  that,  already  damned  on  account  of  original 
sin  and  overwhelmed  with  calamities  by  the  decrees 
of  the  decalogue,  it  was  too  much  that  God  should 
further  threaten  man  in  his  gospel.  At  last  he 
perceived  that  the  justice  of  God  is  that  whereby 
the  just  man  lives,  even  faith,  and  from  that  time 
the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith  became  the 
cardinal  doctrine  of  his  gospel. 

Luther's  doctrine  of  justification  was  shaped  by 
his  previous  conception  of  God.  He  had  been 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  REFORMERS      13! 

actuated  by  a  religious,  not  by  a  moral  yearning. 
It  was  not  so  much  to  be  like  God,  but  to  escape 
God's  wrath — to  be  on  good  terms  with  Him — that 
had  been  the  passion  of  Luther's  soul.  He  con- 
ceived justification,  accordingly,  as  a  means  of  gain- 
ing God's  favour  rather  than  a  means  of  becoming 
godlike.  Luther  pretended  to  have  no  merit  of  his 
own;  God  averted  his  wrath  by  attributing  to  the 
faithful  penitent  Christ's  righteousness.  In  Luther's 
view,  then,  salvation  consists,  not  in  moral  trans- 
formation, but  in  escaping  God's  wrath.  To  be- 
lieve that  one  could  obtain  this  reconciliation  with 
God  by  a  personal  experience,  in  which  the  soul 
comes  directly  to  God  by  faith,  pleading  the  merits 
of  Christ,  without  any  of  the  penances  established 
by  the  church  and  without  priestly  intervention, 
was  a  bold  step  forward.  It  signified  an  important 
break  in  thought  with  the  established  methods  of 
the  Roman  hierarchy.  When,  therefore,  Tetzel  later 
came  into  Germany  selling  indulgences,  Luther's 
personal  experience  had  prepared  him  to  break  with 
such  a  Christianity. 

But  this  new  experience  of  Luther's  led  him  to 
break  with  the  Roman  church  in  other  points  as 
well.  Luther  came  to  believe  that  the  man  who 


132       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

had  thus  by  faith  gained  the  favour  of  God  was  a 
free  man — free  to  live  out  the  results  of  his  faith 
without  the  guidance  of  rules  and  priests.  As  the 
Christian  was  already  a  saved  man,  his  life  here  on 
earth  is,  Luther  taught,  as  sacred  as  his  life  in 
heaven  will  be.  In  this  life  he  may  as  truly  express 
his  Christian  character  here  as  there.  To  do  this 
he  must  not  withdraw  from  the  common  duties  and 
the  common  relationships  to  a  monastery,  but  must 
do  the  common  tasks,  live  the  family  life  and! 
conquer  the  common  temptations.  These  views  at 
once  cut  away  the  authority  of  the  clergy  and 
destroyed  the  motive  for  the  ascetic  life  of  celibacy 
which  had  created  the  great  religious  orders.  More 
than  this,  if  Luther's  teaching  was  true,  the  old  dis- 
tinction between  clergy  and  laity  broke  down.  The 
service  of  a  cobbler  was  as  truly  religious  service 
as  that  of  a  bishop.  In  the  course  of  the  centuries 
the  hierarchy  had  become  the  real  church;  Luther's 
teaching  restored  the  priesthood  of  believers.  Re- 
ligion is  a  thing  of  the  people.  The  clergy  are  the 
representatives  of  the  people;  it  is  the  people  who 
rule.  From  the  extreme  application  of  this  prin- 
ciple in  a  real  democracy  Luther  shrank,  but  the 
principle  was  involved  nevertheless  in  his  recogni- 


MESSAGE   ACCORDING   TO  THE  REFORMERS       133 

tion  of  the  sacredness  of  the  common  life  of  man. 

Luther's  teachings  ennobled  for  the  Christian  all 
right  work.  For  a  maid  to  cook  and  clean  and  do 
other  housework  was  divine  service  because  it  ful- 
filled God's  command  in  helping  to  care  for  the 
home.  Into  all  such  service  Luther  urged  men  to 
put  a  truly  Christian  spirit.  He  would  have  men 
work  for  the  good  of  others  and  thus  show  forth 
the  love  of  God.  It  is  men,  not  God,  who  need  our 
service,  and  whoever  turns  good  works  to  his  own 
advantage  does  no  good  work.  He  set  forth  in  his 
sermons  in  great  detail  what  love  to  one's  fellow 
means,  describing  how  it  should  enter  into  all 
the  relationships  of  life.  He  even  ventured  into 
finance,  to  show  how  it  should  be  applied  to  busi- 
ness. Christian  love,  expressing  itself  in  social 
service,  has  never  been  more  persuasively  urged. 
Luther's  views  of  the  Christian  life  led  him  to  dis- 
card the  Catholic  conception  of  the  offices  of  the 
clergy  and  of  the  church  as  a  sacramental  institution. 
Believers  gained  their  salvation  by  a  direct  expe- 
rience from  God ;  the  church  consisted  of  the  com- 
munity of  such  believers.  One  gained  admission 
to  the  church,  he  believed,  by  faith,  not,  as  other 
reformers  held,  by  election.  Nevertheless  he  held 


134        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

the  church  to  be  an  indispensable  means  of  salva- 
tion. To  it  those  should  go  who  would  know  some- 
thing of  Christ,  and  not  attempt  to  build  bridges 
into  heaven  by  their  own  reason.  Outside  the 
Christian  church  there  was,  he  held,  no  truth,  no 
Christ,  no  salvation.  This  did  not  mean,  as  with 
Rome,  that  salvation  was  confined  to  the  members 
of  one  particular  organization;  it  meant  that  the 
knowledge  of  the  forgiving  love  of  God  in  Christ 
comes  to  men  through  Christian  believers.  In  his 
view  the  church  was  the  means  of  salvation  because 
it  teaches  the  gospel,  not  because  it  conveys  a 
grace.  Luther  was  led  to  take  these  new  positions 
in  consequence  of  his  own  personal  experience  of 
salvation.  In  the  sixteenth  century  they  seemed 
very  radical,  and  were  thought  to  threaten  an  over- 
throw of  the  fundamental  institutions  of  society. 
In  reality  they  but  touched  the  surface  of  the 
religious  life.  They  were  not  a  complete  and  well 
rounded  system  of  doctrines,  for  on  most  of  the 
fundamental  theological  conceptions  Luther  stood 
in  full  agreement  with  the  Latin  church.  Like 
some  of  the  great  theologians  of  that  church  he 
regarded  God  as  an  angry  and  terrible  judge,  whose 
fearful  wrath  avenges  sin  and  permits  no  guilty 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  REFORMERS       135 

man  to  escape.  Notwithstanding  his  conception  of 
the  forgiving  love  of  God  in  Christ,  the  anger  of 
God  formed  the  background  of  all  Luther's  think- 
ing. It  was  only  in  Christ  and  to  the  Christian 
believer  that  God  was  thought  to  disclose  his  love 
as  a  Father.  For  all  others  he  had  only  vengeance 
and  wrath.  Luther  was  also  in  accord  with  the 
mediaeval  theologians  in  his  estimate  of  human 
nature.  The  conception  that  the  natural  man  is 
depraved  and  helpless  was  as  fundamental  to 
Luther's  thought  as  was  the  wrath  of  God.  This 
view  was  no  accidental  survival;  it  was  confirmed 
by  all  Luther's  own  experience.  His  treatise  on  the 
"Bondage  of  the  Will"  exhibits  his  permanent  con- 
viction on  this  point.  He  believed  that  to  throw 
any  doubt  upon  human  guilt,  or  to  hint  at  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  existence  of  human  virtue,  was  to 
belittle  the  grace  of  God.  In  his  thinking  man 
must  be  degraded  in  order  that  God  may  stand  out 
in  his  inherent  exaltation. 

Luther's  conception  of  the  Atonement  was  shaped 
by  his  views  of  God  and  man.  Christ,  he  declared, 
bore  the  anger  of  God  itself — the  eternal  anger 
which  our  sins  deserved.  It  was  this  Divine  anger 
which  constituted  the  inner  sufferings  of  Jesus. 


136       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

God,  seeing  men  overwhelmed  by  the  curse  of  the 
law,  laid,  Luther  thought,  upon  Christ  the  sins  of 
each  individual  man,  saying,  "Be  thou  Peter,  that 
denier;  Paul,  that  persecutor,  blasphemer  and  cruel 
oppressor;  David,  that  adulterer;  that  sinner  which 
did  eat  the  apple  in  Paradise;  that  thief  which 
hanged  on  the  cross;  and  briefly  be  Thou  the  per- 
son which  hath  committed  the  sins  of  all  men.  See, 
therefore  that  thou  pay  and  satisfy  for  them." 
Christ  had,  then,  suffered  the  full  penalty  for 
human  sin.  He  had  also  rendered  full  and  perfect 
obedience.  The  merit  of  this  obedience  could  be 
imputed  to  the  believer.  As  it  was  only  thus  that 
Luther  could  justify  his  faith  in  the  forgiving  love 
of  God,  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  assumed  in 
his  thinking  a  prominence  even  greater  than  in  that 
of  Anselm,  and  through  the  influence  of  Luther 
came  to  hold  a  more  fundamental  place  in  Christian 
thought. 

Luther's  faith  in  the  value  of  the  Atonement 
depended  upon  another  article  of  belief  which  he 
held  in  common  with  the  Catholic  church,  viz. :  the 
deity  of  Christ.  It  is,  according  to  Luther,  only 
in  Christ  that  God  is  known  as  a  gracious  Father. 
Apart  from  this  revelation  He  is  wholly  a  God 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  REFORMERS      137 

of  wrath.  The  stress  which  Luther  gave  to  the 
Atonement  thus  gave  to  the  Deity  of  Christ  an 
added  emphasis.  Luther's  inconsistency  as  a  thinker 
is  especially  manifest  in  his  theory  of  the  sacra- 
ments. To  be  consistent  with  his  theory  that  sal- 
vation comes  by  the  forgiving  love  of  God  in 
Christ  alone,  Luther  held  in  theory  that  the  sacra- 
ments were  nothing  else  than  signs.  Nevertheless, 
so  comforting  was  the  thought  of  the  real  presence 
of  Christ  in  the  elements  of  the  Lord's  supper,  that 
Luther  could  not  give  it  up.  True,  he  no  longer 
interpreted  the  significance  of  the  real  presence  in 
the  terms  of  sacramental  theology;  the  body  and 
blood  of  Christ  were  regarded  as  an  irrefragable 
proof  of  the  death  of  Christ  for  the  sinner,  not  as 
the  nourishment  of  his  spiritual  life.  Luther's  be- 
lief in  the  real  presence  is  not,  therefore  necessarily 
inconsistent  with  his  theological  position.  The 
incongruity  between  the  new  cloth  and  the  old  gar- 
ment is  much  more  conspicuous  in  his  retention  of 
the  rite  of  infant  baptism.  This  rite  Luther  not 
only  retained,  but  accepted  with  it  the  traditional 
doctrine  of  baptismal  regeneration.  In  his  general 
theological  scheme  Luther  did  not  believe  in  regen- 
eration at  all.  The  saved  man  did  not,  in  his  view, 


138       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

experience  a  moral  transformation,  he  simply,  by 
being  forgiven,  escaped  the  wrath  of  God.  In  order 
to  make  infant  baptism  fit  into  this  system  Luther 
was  led  to  declare  that  in  the  act  of  baptism  faith 
is  directly  bestowed  upon  the  infant,  so  that  he 
can  obtain  forgiveness.  Baptism  thus  became  a 
channel  of  faith  as  it  had  been  to  the  Catholics  a 
channel  of  grace.  In  reality  the  rite  was  thoroughly 
inconsistent  with  Luther's  position,  and  it  was  due 
to  custom  and  long  association  that  he  was  unable 
to  discard  it. 

Another  point  in  which  Luther's  thought  re- 
vealed an  inharmonious  blending  of  the  old  and 
new  was  his  idea  of  Biblical  authority.  In  reality 
his  authority  for  his  system  of  doctrine  was  his  own 
experience.  He  believed  these  things  because  he 
had  tried  them  in  the  laboratory  of  his  own  life  and 
proved  their  worth.  Accordingly  he  judged  the 
books  of  the  Bible  by  the  same  criterion.  The 
Epistles  of  Paul,  he  declared,  are  higher  in  author- 
ity than  Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke.  The  Gospel  of 
John  was  to  him  the  unique,  tender,  true  Gospel, 
while  the  Epistle  of  James  was  an  epistle  of  straw. 
Similar  judgments  upon  other  books  were  freely 
expressed. 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING   TO   THE   REFORMERS       139 

In  controversy,  however,  he  felt  the  need  of  some 
external  authority  to  set  over  against  the  authority 
of  the  church.  It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  he 
should  appeal  to  the  Scriptures  as  to  a  divinely 
inspired  and  infallible  collection  of  books,  which 
since  the  second  century  had  been  everywhere 
received.  This  course  brought  confusion  into  his 
theological  thinking. 

In  the  course  of  his  controversies  with  the  Re- 
formers in  Switzerland  Luther  was  led  into  an 
inconsistent  position  as  to  the  relation  of  the  state 
to  the  church.  He  insisted  that  the  civil  govern- 
ment should  see  that  sound  teaching  was  maintained 
in  the  churches.  He  had  taught  that  the  Christian 
man  was  free  to  live  out  his  Christian  life.  His 
theory  of  the  duty  of  government  could  be  recon- 
ciled with  his  earlier  views  only  on  the  supposition 
that  those  alone  who  agreed  with  Luther  were 
Christian,  and  that  these  had  the  burden  of  ruling 
the  world  laid  upon  them. 

Such  in  brief  was  the  thought  of  the  man  who 
laid  the  foundations  of  the  Reformation.  He  did 
yeoman  service  in  helping  men  to  see  that  religion 
was  to  be  experienced  in  the  soul,  that  it  was  not  a 
matter  of  ritual.  His  courageous  stand,  taken  at 


I4O        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

personal  risk,  heartened  others,  and  won  the  earlier 
battles  for  freedom  of  conscience.  In  reality,  how- 
ever, Luther  had  broken  with  the  past  at  a  few 
superficial  points  only,  and  had  stepped  but  a  very 
little  way  out  from  the  deep  shadows  of  the  Latin 
theology. 

The  principal  figure  in  the  pioneer  work  of  the 
Reformation  in  Switzerland  was  Huldreich  Zwingli. 
He  was  a  man  of  different  temperament  and  train- 
ing from  Luther,  and  was  in  a  good  degree  in- 
dependent of  the  great  German  Reformer.  His 
teaching  was  accordingly  radically  different  from 
Luther's.  Zwingli,  when  quite  young,  came  under 
the  influence  of  the  humanistic  learning,  to  which 
the  revival  of  Greek  studies  had  given  rise.  He 
belonged,  accordingly,  to  that  school,  of  which 
Erasmus  was  the  most  distinguished  member. 
Zwingli  had  been  dedicated  by  his  parents  to  the 
priesthood,  and  the  profession  seems  not  to  have 
been  uncongenial  to  him.  It  afforded  leisure  for 
the  pursuit  of  humanistic  studies,  and  opportunities 
to  influence  young  men  in  the  same  direction.  Be- 
ginning his  duties  as  a  parish  priest  at  the  age  of 
twenty-two,  he  soon  became  deeply  interested  in 
the  social  conditions  of  the  people  among  whom  he 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING   TO  THE  REFORMERS       14! 

worked.  These  were  first  the  people  of  Glarus, 
then  those  of  Einsiedeln,  whither  he  went  in  1516. 
These  social  conditions  convinced  Zwingli  that  a 
reformation  was  sorely  needed.  In  1519  he  was 
transferred  to  the  principal  parish  church  of  Zurich, 
where  he  continued  to  labour  in  the  interests  of 
reform,  though  still  remaining  within  the  pale  of 
the  church. 

Zwingli  had  never  passed  through  a  religious 
crisis  such  as  Luther  had  experienced.  He  had 
undergone  the  less  emotional  religious  development 
of  a  cooler  temperament  and  a  scholarly  thinker. 
His  thought  was  always  of  a  less  personal  character 
than  that  of  the  German.  As  Zwingli,  during  his 
early  pastoral  labours,  had  sought  to  bring  the  hu- 
manistic philosophy  to  bear  upon  social  and  relig- 
ious conditions,  the  fundamental  ideas  of  his  system 
of  thought  were  formed — his  conception  of  God, 
his  view  of  the  Bible  as  the  basis  of  authority. 
Shortly  before  his  removal  to  Zurich,  Zwingli  be- 
came familiar  with  Luther's  teaching  concerning 
salvation  by  faith  alone  through  grace  and  not 
through  works.  He  was  at  once  convinced  of  the 
Biblical  character  of  this  doctrine,  and  saw  that  it 
supplied  to  his  own  system  a  needed  element  which 


142       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

would  make  it  adequate  to  meet  the  situation  which 
faced  him.     Zwingli's  open  break  with  the  Catholic 
church   came   in    1523.     Although   Zwingli   assim- 
ilated this  one  doctrine  of  his  great  contemporary 
his  system  of  thought  as  a  whole  was  radically  dif- 
ferent.    He  was  too  much  of  a  humanist  to  think 
of  the  goodness  of  God  as  so  exclusively  bound  up 
with  the  work  of  Jesus  Christ.     His  broad  concep- 
tion of  nature  led  him  to  recognize  to  a  limited 
degree,  but  still  far  more  than  his  contemporaries 
did,  the  immanence  of  God  in  the  world.     He  held 
that  the  creation  had  been  called  into  existence  by 
God's  love ;  all  grades  and  ranges  of  existences  were 
so  many  revelations  of  the  Divine  existence.     They 
had  been  created  that  they  might  rejoice  in  God; 
He  operates  in  and  through  them.     God's  action  in 
the  world  is  immediate,  even  miracles  are  not  inter- 
ruptions of  law,  but  happen  in  accordance  with  law. 
In  accord  with  his  wider  conception  of  the  good- 
ness of  God,  Zwingli  held  that  many  of  the  best 
among  the  heathen,    such   as   Heracles,   Theseus, 
Socrates,   Aristides,   Antigonus,    Numa,    Camillus, 
the  Catos,  and  Scipios,  had  been  saved.     Such  a 
view  was  to  many  of  his  contemporaries  shocking 
in  the  extreme.    Zwingli  regarded  Christianity,  not 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING   TO   THE   REFORMERS       143 

as  God's  only  revelation  of  himself,  but  as  the 
supreme  revelation.  The  Bible  was  taken  as  the 
authority  in  religious  life  because  it  revealed  God's 
will. 

Zwingli  accepted,  as  did  Luther,  the  doctrine  of 
the  trinity,  but  his  broader  system  of  thought  laid 
less  stress  upon  the  Deity  of  Christ.  Like  Luther 
he  taught  the  depravity  of  human  nature,  although 
he  explained  differently  the  consequences  of  the 
fall.  While,  therefore,  he  proclaimed  with  Luther 
the  gospel  of  salvation  by  faith,  the  doctrine  fitted 
into  a  very  different  whole.  Luther  conceived  sal- 
vation as  an  escape  from  the  wrath  of  God ;  Zwingli 
as  ability  to  do  the  will  of  God.  To  the  former, 
there  was  no  true  religion  except  Christianity;  to 
the  latter  Christianity  was  the  highest  and  best  of 
the  religions — the  fullest  revelation  of  the  will  of 
God.  To  the  former  Christ  revealed  God's  redeem- 
ing love;  to  the  latter  he  revealed  God's  will. 
Luther  thought  of  faith  as  the  acceptance  of  God's 
forgiving  love  in  Christ ;  Zwingli,  as  the  acceptance 
both  of  this  and  of  God's  providential  love  revealed 
in  all  his  works.  The  former  found  in  the  bread 
and  wine  the  real  presence  of  Christ ;  the  latter  saw 
in  them  a  memorial  of  the  death  of  Christ.  To 


144        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

deny  the  real  presence  in  the  eucharist,  seemed  to 
Luther  to  rob  the  world  itself  of  such  a  presence, 
but  Zwingli  saw  no  need  to  confine  to  the  eucharist 
a  presence  of  which  the  world  was  full.. 

The  phase  of  Zwingli's  teaching  which  most  pro- 
foundly influenced  Protestantism  was  his  doctrine 
of  God.  He  did  not,  like  Luther,  think  of  God  so 
much  in  personal  terms  as1  a  Creator  and  Father,  but 
in  abstract  terms,  as  an  omniscient,  omnipresent, 
all-powerful  Being.  In  time  he  came  to  regard 
God  as  practically  the  only  active  being  in  the 
universe;  not  merely  the  first  cause,  but  the  only 
cause.  His  power  is  unlimited ;  evil  as  well  as  good 
,  is  His  work.  He  is  above  all  law,  so  that,  though 
all  the  actions  of  men  are  His,  He  can  do  no  wrong. 
He  determines  not  only  the  fate  of  men,  but  their 
deeds.  He  predestines  some  to  eternal  life,  others 
to  eternal  death,  that  in  the  former  He  may  show 
forth  His  mercy;  in  the  latter,  His  justice.  The 
ground  of  salvation,  then,  is  not  faith,  but  election. 
It  proceeds  from  nothing  in  man,  but  solely  from 
the  will  of  God. 

On  this  view  the  church  became,  not  a  commun- 
ity of  believers,  but  a  community  of  the  elect  It 
included  all  these  whatever  their  condition,  whether 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING   TO  THE  REFORMERS      145 

Christian  or  -heathen,  believers  or  unbelievers,  in- 
fants or  adults,  the  dead  as  well  as  the  living. 

It  was  this  doctrine  of  election,  taken  up  by  John 
Calvin,  which  was  to  shape  the  type  of  Protestan- 
tism that  was  to  be  most  influential  for  the  next 
three  hundred  years.  As  a  thinker  Zwingli  occupies 
in  the  history  of  Protestant  thought  a  much  more 
important  place  than  Calvin,  for  it  is  to  Zwingli 
rather  than  to  Calvin  that  this  doctrine  is  due. 
Zwingli  appears  here  as  the  originator,  Calvin  as 
the  follower,  though  it  is  hardly  possible  that 
Zwingli  should  not  have  been  influenced  by  Augus- 
tine. 

John  Calvin,  the  third  of  our  reformers,  was  a 
Frenchman  by  birth.  Born  in  1509,  the  work  of 
reformation  had  been  in  progress  for  a  generation 
before  he  participated  in  it.  During  this  generation 
much  had  happened.  Changes  of  conception  with 
reference  to  the  foundations  of  religion  and  morality 
are  always  attended  with  unsettlement  and  danger. 
The  unsettlement  resulting  from  the  teachings  of 
the  reformers  had  taken  in  Germany  the  form  of  a 
peasant's  war.  As  the  new  teachings  seemed  to  turn 
things  upside  down,  many  were  ready  to  compro- 
mise truth  in  the  interest  of  stability  and  order.  In 
10 


146       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

1534,  two  years  before  Calvin  published  the  first 
edition  of  his  Institutes,  the  Society  of  Jesus  had 
been  organized  to  promote  a  counter  reformation. 
The  Jesuits  presented  to  the  perplexed  age  a  definite 
and  tangible  authority  and  guide  in  religion — an 
infallible  church.  If  Protestantism  was  to  succeed 
it  must  have  an  authority  equally  definite  to  offer 
and  an  equally  tangible  working  system.  The  man 
who  gave  her  these  was  John  Calvin. 

As  Calvin  had  moved  to  Switzerland  before  he 
began  his  work  as  a  Protestant,  he  came  under  the 
influence  of  the  writings  of  Zwingli,  by  whom  he 
was  profoundly  influenced.  This  influence  was  not 
direct,  but  reached  Calvin  through  the  writings  of 
Martin  Bucer.1  Under  this  influence  Calvin  shaped 
his  doctrine  of  God  and  was  led  to  adopt  the  doc- 
trine of  election.  Calvin's  doctrine  of  God  was, 
however,  much  less  philosophical  than  that  of 
Zwingii.  Zwingli's  conception  of  God  rested  on  a 
basis  of  reason;  Calvin's  on  a  basis  of  theological 
authority. 

To  Calvin  God  was  a  personal  Being,  whose  will 
controls  the  universe,  Calvin  professed  to  derive 

*See  A.  C  McGiffert's  Protestant  TkovgMt  Before  Kant, 
p.  86. 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  REFORMERS      147 

all  his  knowledge  of  God  from  the  Scriptures;  in 
reality  he  selected  those  passages  from  the  Bible 
which  taught  the  kind  of  God  which  Calvin  regarded 
as  theologically  necessary,  and  ignored  others  which 
were  inconsistent  with  his  views.  To  Calvin  God 
is  the  absolute  sovereign  of  the  worlds.  The  Cath- 
olic counter-reformation  was  insisting  upon  the 
authority  of  kings  in  matters  political;  Calvin  in- 
sisted upon  the  sovereignty  of  God  in  every  depart- 
ment of  life,  political  as  well  as  religious.  Calvin's 
God  was,  moreover,  the  God  of  a  Deist.  He  was 
thoroughly  distinct  from  the  world  and  separate 
from  nature.  God's  only  connection  with  nature, 
since  it  left  His  hands  as  a  finished  creation,  was 
by  the  intervention  of  miracle.  Angels  and  demons 
were  the  intermediaries  between  God  and  man. 
Satan  himself  is  but  God's  agent  for  the  accomplish- 
ment of  eviL  This  distant  God,  Calvin  believed, 
had  revealed  Himself  through  the  Scriptures  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments.  No  other  revelation  of 
God's  will  had  been  made.  The  Scriptures  do  not 
reveal  the  inmost  nature  of  Deity,  but  only  what  man 
needs  to  know  and  practice.  In  this  practical  realm 
the  Scriptures  are  supreme.  It  was  thus  in  the 
clash  with  Catholicism  that  Calvin  found  a  logical 


148        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

basis  of  authority  as  objective  and  definite  as  theirs. 
To  the  dogma  of  an  infallible  church,  he  opposed 
the  dogma  of  an  infallible  Bible.  Luther  and  Zwin- 
gli  had  both  held  in  different  ways  to  the  authority 
of  Scripture;  Calvin  hardened  this  authority  into 
that  dogma,  which  has  made  it  so  hard  for  Protest- 
ants to  accept  the  results  of  modern  investigation. 
The  tendency  of  his  doctrine  of  Scripture  was  to 
exalt  every  part  of  the  Bible  to  an  equality  with 
every  other  part.  For  the  time  the  dogma  sup- 
plied a  useful  and  needed  weapon  of  defense,  but 
in  the  end  it  introduced  endless  perplexities  into 
Protestant  thought. 

Zwingli's  doctrine  of  election,  as  it  had  been 
elaborated  by  Bucer,  was  accepted  by  Calvin  and 
given  a  central  place  in  his  system.  It  formed  a 
natural  corollary  to  Calvin's  conception  of  the  sov- 
ereignty of  God.  It  was  inconceivable  to  him  that 
any  finite  will  should  thwart  the  decrees  of  the  In- 
finite. God  predestined  from  the  beginning  some 
to  everlasting  life,  others  to  everlasting  death.  The 
fall  of  Adam  had  not  been  an  unforeseen  catas- 
trophe ;  it  had  been  decreed  by  God  before  the  foun- 
dation of  the  world. 

Intimately  connected  with  the  doctrine  of  election 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING   TO  THE  REFORMERS      149 

is  Calvin's  conception  of  human  nature.  This  he 
believed  to  be  wholly  depraved.  God  had  decreed 
that  Adam's  sin  should  be  imputed  to  his  entire 
posterity.  All  men  were  accordingly  born  under  the 
condemnation  of  God.  A  few  are  elected  to  salva- 
tion, but  God  leaves  the  vast  majority  to  the  con- 
demnation which  they  so  richly  deserve.  The  elect 
are  not  chosen  on  account  of  their  goodness,  but  by 
the  act  of  God's  sovereign  will.  Deeply  ingrained 
in  all  Calvin's  thinking  was  a  profound  distrust  of 
human  nature.  While  he  has  in  the  Institutes  a 
section  on  liberty,  he  accorded  to  man  no  real 
liberty.  Liberty  to  him  was  but  freedom  from  the 
necessity  of  obeying  the  ceremonial  law. 

In  his  conception  of  the  Atonement  Calvin  took 
a  position  similar  to  that  of  Luther,  insisting  that 
Christ  had  been  a  substitute  for  humanity,  and  had 
borne  the  actual  penalty  that  men  should  have 
borne.  Man  deserved  eternal  death ;  Christ  accord- 
ingly suffered  eternal  death.  It  is  no  wonder,  said 
Calvin,  that  He  is  said  to  have  descended  into  hell, 
since  He  suffered  that  death  which  the  wrath  of 
God  inflicts  upon  all  transgressors.  He  suffered 
in  His  soul  the  dreadful  torments  of  a  soul  con- 
demned and  irretrievably  lost.  There  were  not 


I5O        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

wanting  those  who  regarded  this  as  a  new  and 
unheard-of  heresy,  but  it  was  the  view  which  on  the 
whole  prevailed.  Thus  the  Anselmic  doctrine  of 
satisfaction  was  transformed  to  a  doctrine  of  actual 
substitution. 

Calvin's  conception  of  the  Christian  life  was 
extremely  rigorous.  The  Christian  should  live  for 
the  other  world,  and  must  eschew  the  pleasures  and 
frivolities  of  this  world.  He  thought  no  middle 
position  possible.  The  earth  must  either  be  vile  in 
our  estimation,  or  retain  our  immoderate  love. 
This  Puritanic  conception  of  the  Christian  life  he 
applied  in  great  detail,  and  in  his  rule  in  the  city  of 
Geneva  endeavoured  to  enforce  it. 

Like  Zwingli,  Calvin  defined  the  Church  as  the 
totality  of  the  elect,  but  he  insisted,  as  Zwingli  had 
not,  upon  the  functions  and  authority  of  the  visible 
church.  Where  the  word  is  truly  taught  and  the 
sacraments  rightly  administered  there,  he  believed, 
was  the  visible  church,  and  outside  of  its  pale  there 
was  ordinarily  no  salvation.  In  Calvin's  concep- 
tion of  the  church  the  clergy  played  a  conspicuous 
part.  In  the  place  assigned  to  them  Calvin's 
system  approaches  the  Roman.  The  clergy,  the 
interpreters  of  the  Divine  word,  are  the  delegates 


MESSAGE   ACCORDING   TO  THE   REFORMERS      151 

of  the  remote  sovereign ;  they  are  separate  from  the 
people  and  are  empowered  by  the  Holy  Spirit  for 
their  high  office.  Thus  the  Reformed  clergy  were 
intended  to  take  the  place  of  the  Roman  hierarchy 
and  to  have  power  over  the  congregations.  In  his 
conception  of  the  relations  of  church  and  state, 
Calvin  approached  much  more  nearly  than  Luther 
the  Roman  conception.  He  agreed  with  the  earlier 
Reformer  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the  state  to 
cherish  the  worship  of  God,  preserve  pure  doctrine, 
and  defend  the  constitution  of  the  church,  but, 
whereas  Luther  had  left  it  to  civil  governors  to 
determine  what  true  religion  is,  Calvin  regarded 
the  state  as  but  the  handmaid  of  the  church.  It 
is  the  function,  he  held,  of  the  clergy  to  determine 
God's  will  and  truth;  the  obligation  to  act  accord- 
ingly rests  upon  the  civil  authority. 

Calvin  at  Geneva  became  the  most  influential  of 
the  reformers.  Young  men  flocked  thither,  learned 
his  system  and  went  back  to  introduce  it  into  their 
own  lands.  John  Knox  thus  conquered  Scotland 
for  Calvin,  and  Calvinism  became  the  prevailing 
type  of  Protestantism  in  France  and  the  Low  Coun- 
tries. Calvin's  theology  was  far  more  widely  ac- 
cepted than  his  church  government.  It  was,  for 


152        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

example,  accepted  by  the  Independents  in  England. 
This  theology,  so  logically  consistent  to  one  who 
accepted  its  fundamental  assumptions,  became  in 
the  centuries  which  followed  the  most  influential 
system  in  Protestantism.  Even  the  Lutheran  and 
Anglican  communions  were  profoundly  influenced 
by  it. 

As  we  look  back  upon  the  three  great  religious 
teachers  here  studied,  it  is  clear  that  the  Protestant 
world  owes  them  a  great  debt.  They  broke  for 
millions  of  men  the  bonds  of  Rome;  they  shaped 
Protestant  thought  to  fight  and  to  survive  in  an 
age  of  stress.  Knowledge,  though  then  rapidly  in- 
creasing, was  fragmentary  and  partial  as  compared 
with  the  knowledge  of  the  present  time ;  these  men 
adapted  the  Christian  message  to  the  knowledge 
of  their  time  in  a  way  that  made  it  grip  men's 
hearts  and  demand  the  consecration  of  their  wills. 

If,  however,  we  put  the  Christian  message  as  these 
men  conceived  it  in  comparison  with  either  of  the 
creative  forms  of  that  message  which  we  find  in 
the  New  Testament,  it  is  clear  that  the  message  of 
the  Reformers  lacked  most  of  the  elements  which 
had  made  the  Christian  message  powerful  in  the 
first  century.  In  Luther  only  do  we  find  any  real 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  REFORMERS      153 

appreciation  of  the  possibility  and  value  of  a  per- 
sonal experience  of  God,  and  Luther's  view  of  this 
is  so  veiled  under  a  misapprehension  of  the  Christ- 
like  nature  of  God,  that  the  experience  appears  in 
an  altogether  different  perspective.  In  the  system 
of  Calvin  no  real  and  vital  experience  of  God  by 
the  Christian  is  recognized.  The  whole  is  almost 
as  formal  as  the  system  of  Rome,  and  is  much 
more  cold,  since  it  lacks  far  fewer  elements  which 
appeal  to  the  imagination. 

Out  of  Calvinism  there  have  come  much  good 
and  much  harm.  Calvin's  doctrine  of  the  sover- 
eignty of  God  has  had  much  to  do  in  overthrowing 
the  tyranny  of  kings  and  establishing  republics. 
On  the  other  hand  his  identification  of  the  letter  of 
the  Bible  with  the  will  of  God  has  been  responsible 
in  recent  centuries  for  much  religious  coldness, 
doubt,  and  even  atheism.  It  is  evident  as  the  years 
roll  by  that  the  Christian  message  as  interpreted 
by  the  Reformers  is  neither  a  complete  nor  a  final 
form  of  the  Gospel  of  God  to  man. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  CHRISTIAN   MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY 
FRIENDS 

THE  movement  which  we  call  the  Reformation 
was  not  a  unit.  It  was  like  an  incoming  tide ;  some 
of  its  earlier  waves  lapped  and  gently  disturbed 
the  inert  seaweed  of  the  marshy  shore ;  other  waves 
submerged  this  weed  altogether,  and  raised  the 
surface  to  heights  which  had  not  for  a  long  time 
been  reached;  while  still  other  and  later  waves 
formed  a  kind  of  spring-tide,  and  rose  to  heights 
that  had  not  been  attained  since  the  far-off  spring- 
time of  Christianity,  sweeping  away  many  an  ec- 
clesiastical hut  and  fishing  camp  which  had  been 
built  along  the  shore.  The  Reformation  in  Eng- 
land, which  was  at  first  a  political  movement,  was 
the  earlier  wave.  It  disturbed  the  seaweed  of 
Popery,  baptismal  regeneration,  works  of  super- 
erogation, and  reduced  the  Sacraments  from  seven 
to  two.  The  Protestant  Reformation  on  the  Con- 
tinent is  comparable  to  the  second  wave,  for  it 
iS4 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS   155 

swept  so  high  that  it  submerged  the  episcopacy  and 
endeavoured  to  take  the  Church  in  its  organization 
back  to  the  beginning  of  the  second  century,  to  a 
time  when  all  presbyters  were  equal,  and  no  mon- 
archical bishop  had  robbed  them  of  their  power. 
The  Quaker  Reformation,  inaugurated  by  George 
Fox,  was  the  highest  wave  of  the  Reformation — 
its  spring-tide — sweeping  as  it  did  the  presbyters 
themselves  away,  and  endeavouring  to  carry  the 
organization  back  in  form  to  primitive  Apostolic 
days.  All  outward  Sacraments,  even  the  two  re- 
tained by  most  other  Protestants,  were  also  swept 
away,  as  were  all  forms  of  priesthood. 

If  we  ask  why  these  early  Friends  were  so  radical 
in  their  reformation,  the  only  adequate  answer  is 
that  they  had  made  a  new  discovery  of  the  meaning 
of  the  old  Gospel.  They  had  ascertained  by  actual 
experience  that  God  is  among  men ;  that  He  quick- 
ens every  penitent  heart;  that  He  makes  the  soul 
of  the  common  Christian  His  dwelling-place;  and 
that  He  gives  His  spiritual  gifts  regardless  of  cul- 
ture and  social  standing. 

In  other  words,  just  as  both  Catholicism  and 
Calvinism  were  based  on  the  supposition  that  God 
once  visited  this  world,  but  has  now  retreated  into 


1 56       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

the  far-off  heavens,  leaving  a  Church  or  a  Book  to 
represent  Him,  Quakerism  was  based  on  the  cer- 
tainty that  God  is  still  in  His  world,  that  now,  as  of 
old,  He  reveals  Himself  to  consecrated  souls,  that 
it  is  the  privilege  of  the  organized  Church  and  of 
each  member  to  be  guided  by  His  living  voice  now, 
and  that  the  Church  ought  to  be  so  organized  as 
to  make  this  possible  privilege  an  actual  reality. 
It  was  thus  that  the  early  Friends  proposed  a  new 
basis  of  authority  in  religion.  Rome  said :  The 
supreme  authority  is  the  Church.  Protestantism 
said,  even  in  its  episcopal  form  in  England:  The 
supreme  authority  is  the  Scriptures.  The  Friends 
said:  The  supreme  authority  is  the  ..Spirit^ 

The  long  struggle  for  peace  through  which 
George  Fox  went  before  he  reached  this  new  ground 
has  been  so  often  recounted  that  it  is  unnecessary 
for  me  to  repeat  it  here.  It  is  no  doubt  well  known 
to  you  all.  The  story  of  his  agony  and  of  the  voice 
that  came  to  him  as  he  walked  in  the  fields,  "There 
is  one,  even  Christ  Jesus,  that  can  speak  to  thy  con- 
dition," is  the  stock-in-trade  of  all  lecturers  on  early 
Quakerism,  and,  indeed,  of  most  Quaker  preachers. 
It  is  not  perhaps  so  well  known  that  before  this 
"opening"  came  to  him,  giving  George  Fox  peace, 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS    1 57 

the  great  fact  that  God  is  in  His  world  and  dwells 
with  His  people  was  borne  in  upon  him.    He  says : — 

"At  another  time  it  was  opened  in  me  that  God,  who 
made  the  world,  did  not  dwell  in  temples  made  with  hands. 
This  at  first  seemed  a  strange  word,  because  both  priests 
and  people  used  to  call  their  temples  or  churches  dread- 
ful places,  holy  ground  and  the  temples  of  God.  But  the 
Lord  showed  me  clearly  that  He  did  not  dwell  in  these 
temples  which  men  had  commanded  and  set  up,  but  in 
people's  hearts ;  for  both  Stephen  and  the  Apostle  Paul  bore 
testimony  that  He  did  not  dwell  in  temples  made  with 
hands,  not  even  in  that  which  He  had  once  commanded  to 
be  built,  since  He  put  an  end  to  it;  but  that  His  people 
were  His  temple,  and  He  dwelt  in  them."1 

The  practical  use  which  he  made  of  this  great 
truth  is  indicated  in  another  passage  in  his  Journal, 
where  he  says: — 

"I  was  sent  to  turn  people  from  darkness  to  the  Light, 
that  they  might  receive  Christ  Jesus;  for  to  as  many  as 
should  receive  Him  in  His  light,  I  saw  He  would  give  power 
to  become  the  sons  of  God;  which  power  I  had  obtained 
by  receiving  Christ.  I  was  to  direct  people  to  the  Spirit 
that  gave  forth  the  Scriptures,  by  which  they  might  be  led 
into  all  truth,  and  up  to  Christ  and  God,  as  those  had 
been  who  gave  them  forth."2 

Many  other  passages  might  be  quoted  to  show 
that  the  indwelling  presence  of  God  was  the  main- 
spring of  all  George  Fox's  gospel.  The  same  is 

1 R.  M.  Jones,  Autobiography  of  George  Fox,  i.  p.  76. 
*  Ibid.,  i.  p.  103. 


158       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

true  of  all  the  real  mystics  of  the  movement.  I 
will  quote  a  bit  from  another  of  the  real  mystics, 
Isaac  Pennington,  whose  writings  are  not  now  so 
widely  read  as  those  of  George  Fox.  In  speaking 
of  his  conversion  Isaac  Pennington  says : — 

"Yes,  indeed,  I  am  satisfied  at  my  very  heart.  Truly 
my  heart  is  united  to  Him,  whom  I  longed  after,  in  an 
everlasting  covenant  of  pure  life  and  peace.  .  .  .  The  Lord 
opened  my  spirit,  the  Lord  gave  me  the  certain  and  sen- 
sible feeling  of  the  pure  seed  [so  the  early  Friends  fre- 
quently called  God  in  the  soul]  which  had  been  with  me 
from  the  beginning;  the  Lord  caused  His  power  to  fall 
upon  me,  and  gave  me  such  an  inward  demonstration  and 
feeling  of  the  seed  of  life  that  I  cried  out  in  my  spirit: 
This  is  He;  this  is  He;  there  is  not  another,  there  never 
was  another.  He  was  always  near  me  though  I  knew  it 
not.  ...  I  gave  up  to  be  instructed,  exercised,  and  led  by 
Him,  in  the  waiting  for  and  feeling  of  His  holy  seed,  that 
all  might  be  wrought  out  of  me  which  could  not  live  with 
the  seed."1 

The  practical  theological  use  to  which  Isaac 
Pennington  put  this  experience  of  the  indwelling 
God  is  less  technically  expressed: — 

"Learn  then  [he  says]  and  know  in  thyself  that  Spirit 
of  prophecy  which  spoke  in  all  the  martyrs.  Hear  that, 
come  to  that,  keep  to  that.  Feel  the  union,  the  fellowship, 
the  spreading  of  that  in  thee.  When  that  bids  thee  go,  go ; 
when  that  bids  thee  come,  come;  when  that  bids  thee  do 
this,  do  it."2 

Again,  he  says : — 

"Indeed,  a  Christian  is  nothing,  and  can  do  nothing, 
1  Works,  ed.  1761,  ii.  p.  52.  "Ibid.,  i.  pp.  32  ff. 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS   150 

without  the  power  and  presence  of  the  Spirit  of  God  in 
him.  .  .  .  So,  then  the  Spirit  is  the  first  thing  to  be  looked 
after  by  him  who  would  be  truly  and  well-groundedly  re- 
ligious." * 

Isaac  Pennington's  conception  of  the  relation  of 
such  impulses  of  the  Spirit  to  the  authority  of 
Scripture  is  expressed  in  another  place,  in  which 
he  is  explaining  (Rev.  xxii.  18,  19)  the  passage 
about  adding  to  or  diminishing  from  the  things 
which  are  written  in  this  book.  Pennington  says  : — 

"He  that  giveth  any  other  meaning  of  any  Scripture 
other  than  what  is  the  true  meaning  thereof,  he  addeth  and 
diminisheth;  he  taketh  away  the  true  sense,  he  addeth  a 
sense  not  true.  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  the  true  exposi- 
tor of  Scriptures ;  He  never  addeth  or  diminisheth :  but  man 
being  without  that  Spirit  doth  but  guess,  doth  but  imagine, 
doth  but  study  or  invent  a  meaning,  and  so  he  is  ever  add- 
ing or  diminishing.  This  is  the  sense,  saith  one;  this  is 
the  sense,  saith  another;  this  is  the  sense,  saith  a  third; 
this,  saith  a  fourth;  another,  that  is  witty  and  large  in  his 
comprehension,  he  says  they  will  all  stand ;  another,  perhaps 
more  witty  than  he,  says  none  of  them  will  stand,  and  he 
invents  a  meaning  different  from  them  all.  And  then,  when 
they  are  thus  expounding  them,  they  will  say,  take  the 
sense  thus,  it  will  yield  this  observation  or  take  it  thus,  and 
it  will  afford  this  observation.  Doth  not  this  plainly  show 
that  he  who  thus  saith  hath  not  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  to 
open  Scripture  unto  him,  and  manifest  which  is  the  true 
sense,  but  is  working  in  the  ministry  of  darkness?  .  .  . 
But  if  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  immediately  open  anything  to 
a  son  or  daughter,  he  cries,  this  is  an  adding  to  the  word. 
The  Scripture  is  written;  there  are  no  more  revelations  to 

1  Ibid.,  i.  p.  36. 


l6o       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

be  expected  now ;  the  curse  saith  he  is  to  them  that  add. . . . 
Having  judged  his  own  darkness  to  be  light,  he  must  needs 
judge  the  true  light  to  be  darkness."1 

In  still  another  passage  Pennington  says : — 

"In  the  light  I  meet  with  infallibility.  The  light  of 
God's  Spirit  is  a  certain  and  infallible  rule,  and  the  eye 
that  sees  it  is  a  certain  eye."* 

And  again: — 

"Every  man  may  err  in  his  interpretation  of  the  Scrip- 
tures further  than  he  hath  a  certain  and  infallible  opening 
of  them  to  his  Spirit,  by  that  Spirit  which  gave  them 
forth."8 

These  passages  clearly  show  how  the  real  mystics 
regarded  the  Spirit  as  the  final  authority.  He 
interpreted  for  them  the  Scriptures,  and  gave  them 
revelations  which  they  regarded  as  of  equal  author- 
ity with  the  Scriptures.  It  was  this  practical  con- 
sciousness of  the  presence  of  God  with  them  that 
gave  the  early  Friends  their  power.  I  am  not 
defending  the  way  Isaac  Pennington  puts  the  mat- 
ter. No  modern  scholar  with  present-day  knowl- 
edge could  do  that.  I  will  point  out  a  little  later 
wherein  he  was  mistaken.  In  the  fundamental  fact 
of  direct  access  to  God,  however,  he  was  right. 

Robert  Barclay,  who  set  himself  to  defend  the 

1  Works,  i.  p.  197. 

2  Quoted  by  R.  M.  Jones  in  Social  Law,  p.  179. 

3  Works,  i.  p.  239. 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS    l6l 

Quaker  position  from  an  England  steeped  in  Pres- 
byterianism,  really  gave  away  the  strength  of  the 
Quaker  stronghold.  He  said: — 

"We  do  look  upon  them  [the  Scriptures]  as  the  only 
outward  judge  of  controversies  among  Christians;  and  that 
whatever  is  contrary  to  their  testimony  is  to  be  rejected 
as  false."1 

Perhaps  the  idea  in  his  mind  was  something  like 
the  sound  modern  principle,  that  the  impression  of 
the  individual  should  be  judged  by  the  best  in  the 
universal  Christian  consciousness.  Such  an  im- 
pression would  have  been  conveyed  had  he  said: 
"Whatever  is  contrary  to  the  best  spirit  revealed  in 
the  Scriptures  may  be  rejected  as  false,"  for  the  New 
Testament  contains  the  best  the  Christian  conscious- 
ness has  ever  known.  His  concession,  as  it  was 
worded,  however,  practically  made  the  Scriptures 
the  standard  again,  and  gave  away  the  vantage 
ground  of  the  position  of  Fox  and  Pennington, 
Barclay's  phrase,  "Whatever  is  contrary  to  their 
testimony,"  was  so  understood  as  to  make  the  letter 
of  every  portion  of  Scripture  supreme,  however 
transitory  or  accidental  the  form  of  that  letter 
might  be. 

It  is  because  of  this  that  in  our  own  time  so  many 

1  Apology f  Pref.  p.  6. 
II 


1 62       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Friends  hold  the  Calvinistic  view  with  reference  to 
the  Bible,  and  have  discarded  the  very  thing  toward 
which  the  thought  of  our  time  is  driving  everybody 
else,  and  which  Fox  and  Pennington  held  more 
than  two  hundred  years  ago.  Had  Barclay  only 
known  his  Bible  as  men  know  it  today,  he  would 
have  known  that  the  Spirit  as  represented  by 
Scripture  is  not  in  details  consistent,  but  declared, 
for  example,  by  Isaiah  that  the  temple  at  Jerusalem 
was  necessary  to  Jehovah,  and  by  Jeremiah  that  it 
was  not,  and  that  both  were  true  for  the  time  when 
they  were  uttered. 

The  heart  of  the  Quaker  message  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  was  this  rediscovery  of  the  direct 
access  of  every  soul  to  God.  How  thirsty  the  age 
was  for  such  a  message  the  thousands  who  enthu- 
siastically welcomed  it  by  joining  Friends  is  elo- 
quent testimony 

This  Quaker  Reformation  differed  from  other 
forms  of  the  Reformation  in  that  it  was  a  move- 
ment of  the  common  people.  Most  of  the  religious 
movements  during  Christian  history  have  originated 
with  scholarly  or  university  men.  So  true  is  this 
that  a  distinguished  author  and  preacher  recently 
declared  in  my  hearing  that  all  such  movements — 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS    163 

movements  originating  as  the  result  of  new  vision 
— came  from  scholars.  He  overlooked  George  Fox, 
however.  Fox  was  no  scholar.  He  knew  his 
Bible,  but  all  between  him  and  Biblical  times  was  to 
him  almost  a  blank.  He  knew  just  enough  of  it  to 
regard  it  as  a  long-continued  apostasy.  Other 
mystics  had  borne  in  substance  before  him  much 
the  same  message  as  Fox.  Such  were  Ruysbroek, 
Eckhardt,  and  Jacob  Boehme,  but  he  did  not  know 
it.  In  an  indirect  way  he  was,  probably,  uncon- 
sciously indebted  to  at  least  one  of  these,  but  his 
message  had  grown  out  of  his  own  experience,  and 
was  as  original  as  that  of  an  Old  Testament  prophet. 

Perhaps  it  was  in  part  because  George  Fox  was 
of  the  people  that  they  heard  him  so  gladly.  But, 
at  all  events,  the  enthusiasm  of  the  throngs  that 
listened  was  equalled  by  the  courage  and  energy  of 
the  early  preachers,  and  before  the  end  of  Fox's 
life  this  message  had  been  carried  all  over  the 
British  Isles,  to  several  countries  of  Continental 
Europe,  to  the  Barbary  States,  to  Turkey,  and  to 
many  parts  of  the  New  World. 

The  real  reason,  however,  why  the  early  Friends 
gained  such  a  hearing  was  that  they  brought  a 
message  for  which  men  were  hungry — the  message 


164       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

of  the  nearness  of  God  and  His  accessibility  to  all. 
This  message  was  practically  new  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  world,  notwithstanding  that  in  the  previous 
century  it  had  been  proclaimed  in  part  by  the 
"Family  of  Love."  Men  with  needy  souls  were 
no  longer  pointed  simply  to  a  Book,  or  directed  to 
submit  themselves  to  the  guidance  of  a  church; 
they  were  neither  told  that  a  far-off  God,  who  had 
once  visited  the  world,  had  instituted  an  organiza- 
tion for  their  torture,  miscalled  by  the  name  of 
guidance;  nor  advised  that  this  same  far-off  God 
had  written  a  Book  for  their  instruction,  which 
told  of  religious  experiences  which  they  themselves 
might  not  hope  to  attain.  They  were  rather  told 
to  look  within  their  own  hearts,  to  expect  the 
Divine  voice  to  speak  there,  to  heed  its  faintest 
whisper,  that  by  accustoming  themselves  to  its 
accents  larger  messages  might  be  heard  more  dis- 
tinctly; they  were  directed  to  read  the  Biblical 
record  of  God's  dealings  with  the  men  of  old  that 
they  might  know  what  to  expect  God  to  do  in  their 
own  lives,  and  as  needy  souls  listened  and  obeyed, 
they  were  enchanted  to  find  themselves  in  actual 
communion  with  God. 

George  Fox  called  Quakerism  primitive  Christi- 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS   l$ 

anity  revived;  and  it  would  indeed  be  difficult,  short 
of  the  Apostolic  time,  to  find  such  thoroughgoing 
mysticism  so  widely  proclaimed  and  so  gladly 
accepted. 

The  consciousness  of  the  indwelling  presence  of 
God  gave  the  early  Friends  a  new  sense  of  the 
importance  of  Christian  living.  If  God  dwelt  in 
man,  man  must  walk  worthily  of  God;  if  the  be- 
liever were  a  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  he  must 
bring  forth  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit.  This  was 
manifested  in  all  their  life,  and  was  the  mainspring 
of  the  characteristic  simplicity  and  sobriety  of 
Quaker  living,  as  well  as  of  that  uprightness  which 
has  made  the  name  Quaker  a  guarantee  for  honesty. 
It  was  also  this  principle  which  led  Friends  to 
abandon  judicial  oaths;  they  saw  that  it  is  in- 
consistent for  a  Christian  to  have  two  standards  ; 
of  truth — to  tell  the  truth  more  exactly  when 
he  has  especially  prayed  God  to  damn  him  if  he 
does  not,  than  he  would  upon  ordinary  occasions. 
This  refusal  caused  them  much  suffering,  which 
was  bravely  borne.  Their  contemporaries  did 
not  understand  their  attitude,  and  many  Friends 
submitted  to  imprisonment  for  their  refusal,  but 
their  persistence  won  in  the  end  a  freedom  of  con- 


l66       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

science  on  this  point  for  the  Anglo-Saxon  world. 

There  had  been  mystics  before  George  Fox,  but 
no  one  since  the  early  Christian  days  had  given 
such  practical  expression  as  he  and  those  whom  he 
called  about  him  to  their  faith  in  God's  presence. 
It  was  this  which  led  to  the  form  of  worship  which 
they  instituted.  If  the  people  were  to  be  taught, 
God  must  teach  them.  If  He  did  not  do  it  by  in- 
spiring some  one  to  speak,  He  might  be  doing  it 
directly  by  His  Spirit.  At  all  events,  it  was  of  little 
worth  for  man  to  speak  if  he  were  not  inspired. 
Indeed,  it  was  worse  than  useless,  for  he  might 
prevent  some  one  from  hearing  the  voice  of  God 
speaking  in  the  heart.  Hence  it  was  that  they  gave 
practical  expression  to  their  faith  in  God's  presence 
with  them  by  meeting  in  silence,  but  accorded  the 
widest  liberty  for  vocal  exercises  on  the  part  of  a 
member  of  the  congregation,  if  moved  thereto  by 
the  Spirit. 

The  same  idea  underlay  their  conception  of  the 
ministry.  The  one  qualification  for  it  was  to  have 
a  Divine  anointing — that  is,  to  receive  a  portion  of 
the  Spirit  of  Christ  into  one's  soul,  to  enlighten  him 
and  to  teach  him  what  to  say.  This  was  the  posi- 
tive side  of  George  Fox's  great  opening,  that  being 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS   167 

bred  at  Oxford  or  Cambridge  was  not  sufficient  to 
make  a  man  a  minister  of  Christ  It  was  not  only 
the  belief  that  one  must  have  a  special  anointing 
with  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  order  to  make  him  a 
minister  in  the  first  place,  but  he  must  receive  a 
few  fresh  drops  of  the  holy  oil,  so  to  speak,  for  each 
occasion.  This  was  in  course  of  time  interpreted 
to  mean  that  the  Spirit  could  illuminate  a  man  only 
at  the  hour  of  meeting,  so  that  all  possible  prepara- 
tion was  excluded.  It  was  also  held  by  Friends 
almost  from  the  start  that  the  Divine  voice  speaks 
more  surely  through  the  feelings  than  through  the 
mind,  so  that  as  time  passed  the  mind  was  sadly 
undervalued  and  the  quality  of  the  ministry  suf- 
fered accordingly;  but  in  spite  of  all  this  the 
organization  of  early  Quaker  worship  and  of  early 
Quaker  ministry  was  a  magnificent  practical  demon- 
stration of  faith  in  the  actual  guidance  of  God  in 
all  that  pertains  to  the  religious  life,  such  as  the 
world  had  not  seen  since  the  days  of  the  Montanists. 
It  was  this  same  faith  in  the  actual  presence  of 
God  in  the  soul  which  led  to  the  discarding  of  the 
ordinances.  Real  baptism  is  by  the  Spirit  only. 
What  does  'he  who  has  that  need  of  a  watery  sign  ? 
Nay,  does  not  practical  experience  teach  that  one 


168       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

who  submits  to  the  rite  with  water  often  has  the 
attention  so  fastened  upon  that  that  he  misses  the 
importance  of  the  real  thing  ?  There  is  likewise  no 
feeding1  of  the  soul  in  communion  except  upon  the 
Bread  of  Life  Himself.  The  outward  symbol  of 
bread  and  wine  frequently,  like  other  outward  sym- 
bols, comes  to  conceal  rather  than  to  reveal  the 
thing  signified.  Hence  the  outward  rites  were  cast 
aside,  and  Friends  became  the  most  radical  of 
reformers.  True,  some  others,  like  the  Schwenk- 
felders,  had  gone  a  little  way  in  this  direction,  but 
none  were  so  thoroughgoing  as  the  Friends.  In 
the  Roman  and  Greek  Churches  there  are  seven 
Sacraments;  Protestants  had  reduced  these  to  two; 
Friends  reduced  them  to  zero.  Or  rather  we  ought, 
in  Lowell's  phrase,  to  say  they  tried  to  "make  each 
meal  a  sacrament." 

From  their  doctrine  of  the  nearness  of  God  these 
early  Friends  gained  a  new  sense  of  the  value  of 
man,  and  hence  gained  a  new  doctrine  of  man.  If 
each  soul  was  visited  by  God — was  a  temple  of  God 
— each  soul  was  of  infinite  value.  If  God  would 
visit  the  soul  of  a  cobbler  as  quickly  as  the  soul  of  a 
king,  all  distinctions  of  class  rested  upon  an  unreal 
foundation.  While  their  doctrine  was  in  reality  an 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS    169 

exaltation  of  man,  it  often  appeared  to  their  con- 
temporaries to  be  a  humbling-  of  the  great.  This 
doctrine  led  them  to  see  that  women  were  on  an 
equality  with  men.  God  as  often  visited  women 
and  endowed  them  with  spiritual  gifts  as  He  did 
men;  so,  far  in  advance  of  the  rest  of  the  world, 
they  accorded  woman  her  true  position,  believing 
with  Paul  that  in  Christ  Jesus  there  is  neither  male 
nor  female,  but  all  are  one.  This  sense  of  the 
value  of  every  man  led  them  to  see  that  war,  which 
is  but  wholesale  murder,  is  absolutely  wrong,  being 
both  inhuman  and  contrary  to  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 
Far  in  advance  of  others,  they  urged  international 
arbitration,  and  William  Penn  laid  down  a  plan  for 
European  peace  which  the  Hague  Conference  is  but 
just  realizing.1 

This  sense  of  human  equality,  arising  from  the 
new  appreciation  of  the  value  of  human  nature,  led 
incidentally  to  some  queer  customs,  which  are  but 
just  dying  out.  Englishmen  had  up  to  this  time 
always  worn  their  bonnets,  and  the  hats  which  suc- 

1  See  his  Essay  toward  the  Present  and  Future  Peace  of 
Europe.  So  able  an  authority  as  William  C.  Dennis,  Ph.D., 
LL.D.,  Assistant  Solicitor  of  the  Department  of  State  at 
Washington,  in  an  address  delivered  at  Providence,  R.  I.,  in 
June,  1908,  clearly  demonstrated  this  point. 


THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

ceeded  them,  in  the  house,  as  the  Turk  still  always 
wears  his  fez.  In  their  homes  they  kept  their  hats 
on,  even  at  table.  The  Englishman  had  developed 
one  deviation  from  this  custom,  which  the  Turk  has 
not;  he  removed  his  hat  when  prayer  was  offered, 
as  a  sign  of  reverence  to  God.  Otherwise  they  wore 
their  hats  even  in  church,  and  Puritan  ministers 
preached  with  their  hats  on.  By  an  innovation  in 
English  custom  men  were  expected  now  to  remove 
their  hats  in  the  presence  of  the  King  or  of  his 
officials.  When  Cromwell  was  Lord  Protector,  he 
and  his  officials  demanded  the  same  honour.  This 
the  Friends  refused  to  give,  on  the  ground  that  it 
was  offering  to  some  men  the  same  homage  as  to 
God.  In  reality,  it  was  a  refusal  to  recognize  that 
any  man  could  be  appreciably  exalted  above  any 
other  man,  and  was  an  expression  of  their  apprecia- 
tion of  the  value  and  dignity  of  the  common  man. 

In  Fox's  time  the  pronoun  "you"  was  still  always 
a  plural,  though  the  custom  of  saying  "you" 
to  a  superior — while  "thou"  was  still  used  to  an 
equal  or  an  inferior — existed.  Underlying  the  inno- 
vation was  the  subtle  flattery  that  the  person  ad- 
dressed as  "you"  equalled  in  value  several  ordinary 
persons.  Again,  the  sense  of  all  human  worth,  as 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS    171 

they  perceived  it,  forbade  the  Friends  to  follow  this 
custom.  In  the  sight  of  God  one  pure  soul  was  as 
good  as  another,  and  their  burning  sincerity  made 
such  flattery  odious  to  them.  They  accordingly 
addressed  every  man,  however  exalted,  by  means  of 
the  same  "thou"  which  was  addressed  to  the 
humblest  menial.  Religious  conservatism  has,  as 
so  often  in  religious  history,  perpetuated  these 
customs  of  the  hat  and  the  plain  language  long 
after  their  meaning  has  vanished,  but  we,  who  today 
are  discarding  them,  ought  to  know  the  past  well 
enough  to  appreciate  the  sturdy  testimony  to  equal- 
ity and  brotherhood  which  these  "testimonies" 
originally  expressed.  In  the  eighteenth  century 
this  sense  of  the  worth  of  every  man  began  to  im- 
press Friends,  far  in  advance  of  others,  with  the 
wickedness  of  slavery,  and  they  became  the  earliest 
advocates  of  the  abolition  of  the  slave. 

Fired  with  no  less  a  message  than  the  nearness  of 
God  and  His  willingness  to  forgive — nay,  His  actual 
presence  already  in  every  soul — a  message,  too, 
which  infinitely  exalted  every  human  being  as  it 
revealed  the  fact  that  God  regards  that  being  as 
His  temple,  is  it  any  wonder  that  the  Friends  were 
gladly  heard?  When  they  saw  how  blind  the 


THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Church  at  large  was  to  this  message,  is  it  any 
wonder  that  they  travelled  everywhere,  preaching 
it  with  surpassing  zeal?  This  thought  that  God 
actually  visits  every  soul,  so  far  from  cutting  for  the 
early  Friends  the  nerve  of  missionary  effort,  was  the 
chief  motive  which  sent  them  forth.  They  gave 
their  message  with  confidence,  assured  that  God 
had  visited  the  soul  in  advance  to  prepare  the  way 
for  His  truth.  The  word  of  God  to  Pascal,  "Thou 
wouldst  not  seek  Me,  if  thou  hadst  not  already  found 
Me,"  was  in  substance  their  philosophy  of  the  con- 
version of  any  person. 

We  make  a  great  mistake  if  we  think  these  eariy 
Friends  pointed  men  to  look  within  to  some  abstract 
Divine  principle  which  they  would  find  in  themselves. 
We  are  sometimes  misled,  because  in  the  obsolete 
language  of  the  seventeenth  century  they  used  the 
words  "principle,"  "seed,"  etc.  They  did  believe 
that  every  soul  possesses  a  capacity  for  God,  that 
the  Spirit  visits  every  one,  that  unless  a  man  finds 
God  in  his  own  soul  he  will  not  find  Him  anywhere, 
but  they  by  no  means  undervalued  the  objective 
revelation  of  God's  goodness  and  redeeming  love  in 
Jesus  Christ.  The  preaching  and  writings  of  all 
these  sturdy  Quaker  apostles  is  witness  to  their 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS    1/3 

sincere  belief  that  the  voice  of  God  within  man 
needs  to  be  quickened  by  a  vivid  appreciation  of  the 
infinite  love  of  the  Father  as  manifested  in  the  life 
and  death  of  Jesus  Christ.  Their  mysticism  was  no 
mere  moonshine ;  it  was  true  to  the  facts  of  history 
and  of  experience.  Their  gospel  was  not  the  vague 
and  vain  pointing  of  men  to  an  impalpable  principle 
within;  it  was  the  vigorous  presentation  of  the 
revelation  of  the  love  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ,  and 
a  call  to  every  man  to  find  the  motive  for  yielding 
to  that  love  not  only  in  the  Divine  story  enshrined 
in  a  Book,  but  on  account  of  the  confirmation  of 
that  story  written  by  God's  own  Spirit,  first  in  the 
structure  and  needs  of  their  own  hearts,  and  then  in 
an  actual  experience  of  its  power  in  themselves.  It 
was  a  great  message;  it  was  grandly  conceived;  it 
was  heroically  delivered. 

And  yet  there  came  a  time  in  the  eighteenth 
century  when  this  message,  delivered  by  the  second 
generation  of  Quakers,  began  to  fail  to  gain  a  hear- 
ing. As  we  look  back  now  to  the  literature  which 
it  called  forth,  we  find  the  message  itself  put  in 
phrases  so  bizarre  and  obsolete  that  it  fails  to  grip 
the  hearts  even  of  those  of  us  who  have  grown  up  in 
a  traditional  reverence  for  its  value.  Why  is  this? 


THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

The  answer  is  no  doubt  manifold;  but  it  lies  in 
part  in  the  fact  that  the  early  Friends  interpreted 
their  message,  both  as  to  its  vocabulary  and  its 
thought  forms,  in  the  concepts  of  their  century. 
They  reached  men  in  the  seventeenth  century  be- 
cause they  spoke  the  language  of  that  century.  The 
eighteenth,  nineteenth  and  twentieth  centuries  have 
all  been  different,  their  religious  atmosphere  is  in 
each  case  peculiar  to  itself;  we  have  failed  to  con- 
tinue the  work  of  the  early  Friends  because  we  have 
continued  to  repeat  their  phrases  instead  of  trans- 
lating their  central  truth  into  the  language  of  each 
successive  century. 

While  the  early  Friends  put  their  message  in  the 
best  form  for  the  seventeenth  century,  it  was  a  form 
which,  judged  by  our  present  knowledge,  had  some 
grave  defects.  Robert  Barclay,  the  theologian  of 
the  movement,  was  under  the  direct  influence  of  the 
philosopher  Descartes,  as  one  of  our  young  Friends 
has  proved  in  a  doctor's  dissertation  written  during 
last  year.  The  form  in  which  the  Friends  put  their 
doctrine  of  the  inner  Light  was  influenced  by  this 
Cartesian  philosophy.  Descartes  taught  that  man 
is  given  certain  innate  ideas  by  his  Creator;  they 
are  Divine  ideas,  though  apparently  inborn  in  the 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS   175 

man;  but  they  are  no  more  related  to  the  man's 
human  nature  than  the  cartridge  is  related  to  the 
gun;  they  are  put  there  by  One  who  is  foreign  to 
the  soul,  and  belong  to  Him.  Barclay's  exposition 
of  the  inner  Light  is  clearly  founded  on  this  philo- 
sophy, and  I  suspect  that  it  was  the  same  philosophy 
which  caused  the  frequent  use  of  "seed"  and  similar 
terms  when  speaking  of  the  inner  Light.  Every 
well-informed  man  now  knows  that  the  Cartesian 
psychology  was  mistaken  and  false.  If  accordingly 
we  continue  to  teach  the  great  truth  of  God's  visita- 
tion of  every  soul  in  the  language  of  Barclay,  we 
shall  "make  their  truth  our  falsehood,"  to  borrow 
another  phrase  from  Lowell. 

Another  point,  in  which  we  now  see  that  the 
thought  of  the  early  Friends  was  from  the  modern 
standpoint  wrong,  was  their  conception  of  the  con- 
trast between  the  human  and  the  Divine,  and  the 
chasm  which,  in  their  view,  yawned  between  the 
two.  It  is  not  strange  that  they  thought  as  they 
did  about  this,  for  their  view  was  the  commonly 
accepted  belief  from  the  earliest  days  of  Christen- 
dom onward,  and  was  peculiarly  emphasized  in  the 
Cartesian  philosophy.  Christians  had  long  thought 
that  a  definite  line  determined  where  the  human 


THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

leaves  off  and  the  Divine  begins,  that  the  boundary 
between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  is  a  well- 
defined  and  knowable  limit.  The  Fathers  of  the 
Council  of  Chalcedon,  for  example,  believed  it.  The 
Friends  not  only  believed  this,  but  they  shared  with 
the  Calvinists  of  their  time  a  distrust  of  all  things 
human.  Somehow  Adam's  sin,  or  everybody's  sin, 
had  made  human  nature  worthless.  God  would 
visit  it;  indeed,  He  had  put  these  Divine  cartridge- 
like  ideas  into  every  man;  but  the  human  by  itself 
was  to  be  distrusted.  It  was  this  view  which  led  to 
the  disuse  of  the  reason  in  worship.  Instead  of  re- 
garding the  human  mind  as,  when  consecrated  and 
sanctified,  the  fittest  of  all  instruments  known  to 
earth  for  the  expression  of  the  Divine,  they  regarded 
it  as  an  absolute  hindrance  to  such  expression. 
Whittier  has  voiced  their  fundamental  position  on 
this  point  in  a  line  of  his  otherwise  beautiful  poem, 
"The  Meeting"  :— 

"God  should  be  most  where  man  is  least." 
This  incongruity  between  the  human  and  the 
Divine  is  to  present-day  thought  an  exploded  idea. 
The  ancestry  of  this  idea  really  goes  back  through 
Calvin,  Augustine,  and  Mani  to  the  non-Christian 
Zoroaster  and  his  earlier  heathen  ancestors.  The 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS   177 

best  thought  now  holds  that  we  are  akin  to  God. 
To  take  an  illustration  from  the  dog — and  good 
men  may  learn  some  of  their  best  lessons  from  the 
dog — I  recognize  in  my  dogs  a  reasoning  power 
akin  to  that  in  me.  The  two  differ  in  degree  rather 
than  in  kind,  and  yet  the  intellect  of  man  so  far 
surpasses  that  of  the  dog  in  degree  that  it  amounts 
to  a  difference  in  kind.  Somehow  thus  are  the 
human  and  the  Divine  conceived  today.  They  are 
seen  to  be  akin,  to  be  related.  They  are  not  identi- 
cal, but  they  overlap;  there  is  no.  chasm  between 
them.  The  natural  is  a  part  of  the  Divine.  The 
emphasis  which  the  early  Friends  put  upon  this  non- 
existent contrast  makes  their  message  seem  to  a 
modern  man  distorted. 

Another  conception  shared  by  the  early  Friends 
with  all  former  folk,  from  the  primitive  savage  to 
the  modern  revivalist,  as  Davenport  has  shown  in 
his  book,  Primitive  Traits  in  Religious  Revivals, 
was  the  idea  that  abnormal  states  bordering  upon 
the  trance,  when  the  mind  is  inactive  and  the  feelings 
predominant,  or  when  words  are  uttered  without  the 
action  of  the  mind,  is  an  especial  manifestation  of 
the  power  of  the  Spirit.  We  now  know  that  this  is 

not  so;  we  know  that  such  states  are  induced  by  a 
12 


178       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

nervous  excitement,  which  inhibits  the  action  of  the 
highest  powers  of  the  individual.  It  accordingly 
seems  to  the  intelligent  modern  mind  that  far  too 
much  emphasis  was  laid  by  Friends  on  feelings 
and  phenomena  that  bordered  upon  this  unhealthy 
excitement.  But  if  they  counted  this  nervous  ex- 
citement a  Divine  manifestation,  again  they  erred 
with  all  the  world,  and  are  not  to  be  blamed.  All 
the  mystics  had  held  the  same  view.  It  was  this 
belief  which  kept  mysticism  alive,  although  now 
mysticism  has  to  be  disinfected  from  its  microbe. 

Another  vital  weakness  in  the  presentation  of 
early  Quakerism — a  weakness  which  grew  directly 
out  of  the  two  mistaken  conceptions  last  considered 
— was  the  undervaluation  of  the  function  of  the 
mind  in  religion.  This  undervaluation  had  become 
so  prominent  in  the  second  generation  that  it  began 
a  kind  of  dry  rot  in  the  whole  organization.  The 
mind  was  regarded  as  man's  most  undivine  posses- 
sion, excepting,  perhaps,  his  animal  passions.  There 
was  no  hint  that  it  could  be  made  the  instrument  of 
the  Spirit;  that  was  the  function  of  the  feelings. 
George  Fox  apparently  did  not  share  fully  this  point 
of  view,  for  he  had  "openings,"  which  imply  some 
grasp  of  intellect;  but  "openings"  soon  gave  way 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS   179 

to  "feelings"  or  "draughts,"  as  one  Journal  quaintly 
calls  them,  and  the  way  was  thus  opened  for  religion 
to  become,  at  least  in  the  outward  expression  of  it, 
inane  and  mawkish. 

One  other  mistake  of  the  early  Quaker  movement 
— a  mistake  that  has  in  some  quarters  borne  curious 
fruit — was  that  they  took  the  impressions  of  their 
own  individual  minds  as  the  guarantee  of  ultimate 
truth.  This  is  really  the  position  taken  by  Isaac 
Pennington  in  the  passage  cited  above.  One's  indi- 
vidual impression,  on  the  contrary,  must  be  cor- 
rected by  comparison  with  the  whole  Christian 
consciousness,  or  as  much  of  it  as  is  within  one's 
reach,  before  it  affords  firm  standing  ground.  If  it 
be  in  accord  with  the  best  that  that  consciousness 
reveals,  then  it  may  be  taken  as  assured  authority 
for  the  time  being.  It  is  thus  that  the  Scriptures 
gain  their  rightful  authority.  Their  best  is  the  best 
that  the  religious  consciousness  of  man  knows,  and 
accordingly  that  best  has  normative  value. 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  I  am  passing  on  the 
early  Friends  no  criticism,  except  such  as  I  hope  a 
future  generation  will  pass  upon  us.  My  criticism 
is  in  reality  praise,  for  it  is  testimony  that  they  spoke 
their  message  in  the  terms  of  the  thought  of  their 


l8o       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

age.  That  it  was  which,  next  to  the  Divine  char- 
acter of  the  message  itself,  gave  them  their  power. 
The  thought  of  that  age  was  imperfect  and  tem- 
porary, just  as  the  thought  of  our  age  is.  If  we 
succeed  in  interpreting  the  great  Quaker  message — 
the  vital  message  of  religion — to  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, the  men  of  the  twenty-second  century — with  a 
better  knowledge  of  the  universe  than  even  our 
evolutionary  doctrine  and  our  pragmatism  afford — 
will,  I  hope,  be  able  to  point  out  our  errors,  just  as  I 
have  today  pointed  out  some  of  those  of  the  early 
Friends.  Will  they  find  as  much  of  consecration, 
of  insight,  of  moral  heroism,  of  the  power  of  God 
in  us  to  admire  as  we  find  in  the  early  Friends  ?  If 
they  do,  we  shall  have  soon  to  experience  a  great 
awakening ! 

The  fact  is,  we  admire  the  early  Friends  for  their 
revival  of  the  early  Christian  message  of  Paul  and 
John — the  great  truth  that  man  may  be  united  to 
God  in  one  community  of  life,  so  that  what  the  man 
does,  in  a  real  sense  God  does.  The  message  is 
permanent;  its  form  changes.  Paul  gave  it  one 
form  for  the  middle  of  the  first  century;  the  great 
author  of  the  Johannine  writings,  another  for  the 
end  of  that  century ;  Clement  of  Alexandria,  another 


MESSAGE  ACCORDING  TO  THE  EARLY  FRIENDS  l8l 

for  the  end  of  the  second  century;  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi,  another  for  the  thirteenth;  the  German 
mystics,  another  for  the  fourteenth;  George  Fox, 
another  for  the  seventeenth  century;  and  John 
Wesley,  another  for  the  eighteenth.  Can  it  be  given 
a  form  for  the  twentieth  century?  That  is  the 
problem  to  which  we  must  next  address  ourselves. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  CHRISTIAN   MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH 
CENTURY 

IT  is  far  easier  to  be  a  fairly  successful  historian 
than  an  indifferent  prophet ;  yet  he  who  would  out- 
line the  Christian  Message  as  it  must  be  put  so  as  to 
satisfy  the  longings  and  kindle  the  ideals  of  the 
people  of  the  present  and  the  immediate  future  must 
be  a  prophet  indeed.  I  make  no  pretence  to  that 
high  office,  and  at  the  most  can  give  but  a  few 
hints  of  what  the  message  should  be. 

Some  one  is,  perhaps,  ready  to  ask,  Why  does  the 
present  need  any  different  message  from  that  pro- 
claimed in  the  past?  It  does  not  need  a  different 
message,  but  rather  the  old  message  grounded  on  a 
foundation  the  validity  of  which  men  of  the  present 
will  recognize,  and  freed  from  implications  which 
are  now  seen  to  be  mistaken  and  false. 

Since  John  Fiske  some  years  since  called  atten- 
tion to  the  fact,1  it  has  become  a  commonplace  to 

1  See  his  Idea  of  God,  pp.  46-61. 
182 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       183 

assert  that,  within  the  last  seventy  or  one  hundred 
years,  the  knowledge  of  man  has  increased  more 
than  during  all  other  periods  of  his  history  com- 
bined. It  is  unnecessary  now  to  remind  us  that 
practically  all  our  sciences  have  been  born  in  this 
period,  and  that  scientific  methods  have  been  applied 
to  all  departments  of  knowledge.  The  change  in 
the  material  side  of  life  represented  by  railway, 
steamship,  telegraph,  telephone,  and  phonograph, 
has  been  accompanied  by  an  equally  radical  change 
and  equally  significant  progress  in  all  departments 
of  knowledge.  These  changes  have  created  what  is 
practically  a  new  intellectual  world  for  man.  There 
is  only  time  here  to  note  two  or  three  characteristics 
of  the  thought  of  this  new  intellectual  world  which 
bear  especially  upon  the  topic  in  hand. 

In  the  first  place,  there  is  a  strong  sweep  in  the 
thought  of  the  present  day  toward  a  monistic  philo- 
sophy of  the  universe.  The  distinction  between 
God  and  nature,  even  the  distinction  between  God 
and  matter,  is  difficult  to  maintain.  What  we  used 
to  count  as  solid  atoms  are  now  seen  to  be  rapidly 
revolving  rings  of  gas  or  ether,  and  some  substances, 
as  radium,  tend  to  an  activity  which  entirely  dissi- 
pates them.  It  now  seems  probable  that  matter  it- 


184       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

self  is  but  a  form  of  the  divine  activity.  If  this  be 
true,  the  old  Persian  dualism  becomes  for  ever 
impossible.  We  can  never  think  again  of  matter 
as  corrupt ;  nor  can  we  imagine  that  it  is  the  work 
of  an  evil  deity. 

Although  the  philosophy  of  our  time  is  sweeping 
strongly  and  inevitably  towards  monism,  it  is  not 
easy  on  its  basis  to  solve  all  the  problems  of  life. 
The  difficulties  are,  however,  infinitely  less  than  the 
difficulties  of  dualism.  In  dualism,  even  as  baptised 
by  St.  Augustine  with  a  Christian  baptism,  mono- 
theism is  in  reality  sacrificed,  and  life  for  all  but  a 
select  few  becomes  a  counsel  of  despair.  The  diffi- 
culties of  monism  are  at  the  opposite  extreme.  The 
dangers  are  that  men  will  think  that  the  visible 
universe  exhausts  all  God's  activities ;  that  they  will 
in  their  recognition  of  the  important  truth  that  God 
is  immanent  in  His  world  deny  the  fact  of  His 
transcendence;  that  in  recognizing  a  revelation  of 
Him  in  nature  and  in  man  they  will  lose  faith  in 
His  personality;  that  as  they  realize  that  neither 
nature  nor  man  accomplishes  the  least  thing  apart 
from  God,  they  will  lose  their  sense  of  the  reality 
and  heinousness  of  sin. 

All  these  are  dangers — dangers  which  are  very 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       185 

real  and  which  must  be  met.  We  may  confess  that 
they  have  not  yet  been  met  adequately,  even  to  the 
satisfaction  of  any  number  of  the  modern  thinkers 
themselves,  but  that  does  not  mean  that  they  are 
insuperable.  Nothing  is  to  be  gained  by  scolding  at 
the  trend  of  the  philosophy  of  our  age;  it  cannot 
help  sweeping  toward  the  monistic  standpoint  any 
more  than  one  can  help  believing  that  two  and  two 
make  four.  We  must  go  whither  the  evidence 
takes  us.1 

I  am  not  a  philosopher,  and  if  I  were,  this  is  not 
the  place  to  discuss  these  abstruse  questions*  I 
may  only  say  in  passing  that  I  have  faith  that  the 
thought  of  our  time  will  be  saved  from  thinking 
that  nature  exhausts  God's  expression  of  Himself; 
that  it  will  be  saved  from  denying  His  personality; 
and  that  it  will  hold  to  His  transcendence  as  well  as 
to  His  immanence  as  it  learns  more  and  more  of 
Him  through  the  study  of  His  highest  handiwork 
— human  personality.  I  also  myself  believe  that  in 
the  fact  of  the  freedom  of  the  will,  the  necessity 
of  this  freedom  to  character,  and  in  the  fact  that 
real  freedom  involves  the  power  to  do  wrong  as  well 

1The  statement  is  true  of  the  trend  of  the  thought  of  the 
time,  in  spite  of  Professor  William  James's  plea  for  "plural- 
ism." See  the  Hibbert  Journal,  vol.  vi.  July,  1908,  pp.  721-728. 


186       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

as  right,  together  with  the  fact  that  the  animal  in- 
heritance of  appetite  entices  towards  the  selfish 
choice,  will  be  found  a  satisfactory  explanation  of 
the  origin  of  sin  quite  in  harmony  with  a  monistic 
philosophy,  when  some  philosopher  gains  the  insight 
necessary  to  write  a  complete  intellectual  justifica- 
tion of  it. 

Whether,  however,  this  age-long  philosophical 
puzzle  is  or  is  not  approaching  a  satisfactory  solu- 
tion in  our  time,  two  things  are  clear: — The  con- 
science of  our  age  is  keener  than  that  of  preceding 
ages  in  recognizing  the  heinousness  of  sins  in  the 
concrete;  and  the  thought  of  the  age  has  for  ever 
made  it  impossible  to  think  of  God  as  separated 
from  nature,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  builder  of  a 
dynamo  is  separated  from  the  dynamo,  or  to  think 
of  Him  as  ever  far  removed  from  the  world  or  from 
men. 

This  fact  has  created  a  conception  of  the  universe 
the  antithesis  of  that  in  which  Christianity  was 
born.  In  the  first  century  of  our  era,  not  only  was 
science  yet  unknown,  but  there  existed  in  Palestine 
no  adequate  conception  of  nature  as  such.  What 
we  call  the  "laws  of  nature"  were  not  conceived. 
Men  lived  in  an  Arabian  Nights  world.  Anything 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       187 

could  be  done,  they  believed,  if  one  could  only  ob- 
tain control  of  a  spirit  powerful  enough  to  control 
the  spirit  which  was  acting.  Good  deeds  proceeded 
from  a  seemingly  good  spirit  (it  might  not  really 
be  so)  ;  evil  deeds  from  a  seemingly  evil  spirit.  In- 
sanity was  not  known  to  result  from  disordered 
nerves  or  a  disordered  brain,  but  was  thought  to 
result  from  demoniacal  possession.  To  cure  it  a 
good  spirit  sufficiently  powerful  to  cast  out  the 
demon  must  be  present.  No  wonder  that  in  such 
an  age  stories  of  marvels  abounded!  Christianity, 
and  indeed  all  other  religions,  were  born  in  this 
intellectual  atmosphere. 

Later  centuries  reduced  these  conceptions  to 
something  like  order.  After  a  more  adequate  con- 
ception of  nature  had  been  obtained,  Thomas 
Aquinas,  in  the  thirteenth  century,  put  forth  his 
famous  theory  of  a  kingdom  of  nature  and  a  king- 
dom of  grace.  The  former  was  controlled  by  laws 
which  we  can  observe ;  the  latter  was  made  known 
by  incomprehensible  miracles.  The  modern  re- 
ligious world  is  the  heir  of  this  conception,  and  has 
been  taught  that  miracles  are  the  necessary  attesta- 
tion of  Christianity,  until  many  regard  adherence 
to  the  world-view,  in  which  accounts  of  miracles 


l88        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

naturally  had  their  birth,  as  a  part  of  faith  in  the 
Gospel. 

Meantime  a  new  world-conception  has  come  to 
stay  in  scientific  circles.  Not  only  does  God  work 
in  nature  by  law,  but  wherever  we  find  Him  work- 
ing, even  in  the  realm  of  the  soul,  it  is  by  law  also. 
What  a  few  years  ago  would  have  been  regarded  as 
most  wonderful  miracles — such  as  taking  photo- 
graphs through  opaque  substances — are  now  mat- 
ters of  commonplace  science.  We  do  not  regard  a 
new  experience  as  a  miracle,  but  as  something 
capable  of  being  understood,  and  as  we  seek  to 
understand  it,  it  reveals  in  part  at  least  its  laws. 
This  leads  men  to  believe  that  what  is  beyond,  and 
is  at  present  incomprehensible,  is  controlled  by  law 
also — that  law  is  God's  way  of  acting  and  revealing 
Himself.  As  a  result  it  is  a  part  of  the  world-con- 
ception of  our  time  that  He  is  actually  revealed  in 
nature.  More  and  more  men  are  coming  to  believe 
that  there  is  no  distinction  or  chasm  between  the 
natural  and  supernatural — that  one  is  a  part  of  the 
other.  Such  distinction  as  there  is,  is  believed  to  be 
analogous  to  that  between  the  material  and  the 
spiritual.  Both  material  and  spiritual  are  seen, 
however,  to  be  forms  of  divine  activity  and  to  reveal 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       189 

the  nearness  of  God,  though  the  spiritual  is  a  higher 
form  of  activity  than  the  material. 

This  recognition  of  the  nearness  of  God  has  swept 
away  for  ever  from  people  who  coordinate  their 
knowledge  some  ideas  which  have  played  an  im- 
portant part — sometimes  beneficent  and  sometimes 
horrible — in  the  history  of  Christianity.  The  idea 
of  an  infallible  Church,  like  that  of  an  infallible 
Bible,1  has  for  such  people  gone  for  ever.  It  is 
unthinkable,  to  one  who  lives  in  the  thought  of  the 
present,  that  God  was  ever  far  enough  from  men 

1  It  hurts  some  good  souls  to  have  the  Bible  thus  spoken  of. 
If  by  the  term  "infallible"  it  was  meant  that  the  Bible  "infal- 
libly leads  to  God,"  as  a  prominent  preacher  has  recently  put 
it,  there  might  be  less  reason  to  object  to  the  phrase,  though 
observation  teaches  that  even  this  is  not  true  for  all  cases. 
"Infallible"  has,  however,  been  taken,  even  by^  the  Church 
itself,  to  mean  that  the  Bible  contains  no  errors  in  any  of  its 
statements  concerning  science  or  history,  and  that  the  ethics 
of  the  Old  Testament  are  still  patterns  for  us.  Modern  study 
has  shown  not  only  that  this  is  untrue,  but  that  often  different 
Biblical  writers  give  mutually  exclusive  representations,  which 
cannot  both  be  true  (as  for  example  in  2  Samuel  xxiv.  and 
i  Chronicles  xxi.).  All  this  is  harmonized  with  the  Bible's 
matchless  ethical  and  spiritual  teaching  by  the  view  that  the 
Bible  records  a  progressive  revelation,  and  that  each  writer 
expressed  his  sublime  message  through  the  medium  of  his 
own  intellectual  outlook.  The  times  demand  that,  at  the  risk 
of  grieving  some  devout  souls  whose  salvation  is  secure, 
Christians  should,  for  the  sake  of  intelligent,  perplexed  doubt- 
ers, show  their  devotion  to  and  faith  in  the  God  of  truth  by 
leading  the  van  in  proclaiming  the  plain,  unequivocal  facts 
about  this  matter. 


IQO        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

to  make  either  an  institution  or  a  book  His  vicar. 
If  He  was  ever  present  in  His  world,  He  is  present 
now.  If  men  ever  had  access  to  Him,  they  may 
have  access  to  Him  now.  It  is  also  unthinkable, 
to  one  who  grasps  the  significance  of  the  knowledge 
of  the  present,  that  ever  in  this  world  either  a  man 
or  a  book  should  be  infallible.2 

This  being  the  case,  Christian  workers  are  asking, 
sometimes  with  hopeful  interest,  sometimes  in  blank 
despair,  Have  we  then  any  secure  basis?  Is  there 
no  authority  to  which  we  can  point  inquiring  souls  ? 
Has  the  Bible  no  value  ?  Is  appeal  never  to  be  made 
to  the  authority  of  the  Church?  These  are  im- 
portant practical  questions.  A  right  answer  to 
them  is  vital  to  every  one  who  would  in  this  gen- 
eration undertake  the  cure  of  souls.  The  answer 

*It  has  been  frequently  pointed  out  (see,  for  example, 
Edward  Grubb's  Authority  and  the  Light  Within,  p.  30)  that 
the  assumption  that  our  Bible  is  an  infallible  guide  involves 
not  only  the  infallibility  of  God,  but  four  separate  human  in- 
fallibilities, all  impossible: — (i)  That  God's  truth  was  infal- 
libly apprehended  by  the  Biblical  writers ;  (2)  that  they  infal- 
libly expressed  it  in  human  language ;  (3)  that  what  they 
wrote  has  been  infallibly  transmitted  to  us ;  and  (4)  that  we 
can  infallibly  interpret  their  expressions.  Infallibility  in  all 
things  implies  omniscience,  and  the  Gospels,  as  the  holders  of 
the  kenosis  doctrine  all  recognize,  tell  us  that  even  Jesus 
shared  our  human  ignorance  on  some  points  (see  Luke  ii.  52, 
and  Matthew  xxiv.  36;  also  cf.  above,  chapter  I.  the  third 
note). 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       IQI 

attempted  here  has  grown  out  of  personal  experience 
as  a  working  Christian.  My  answer  may  not  be  a 
final  one,  but  it  is  one  which  in  theory  looks,  I 
believe,  in  the  right  direction,  and  which  in  prac- 
tice has,  in  cases  which  could  be  named,  proved  its 
value  as  a  curative  in  the  clinic  where  souls  seek 
healing  through  the  aid  of  their  fellows. 

A  soul  distressed  by  the  loss  of  childhood's  faith 
comes  and  asks,  How  do  you  know  that  the  unfold- 
ing of  God  in  nature  does  not  exhaust  Him  ?  How 
do  you  know  that  He  has  personality?  How  do 
you  know  that  it  is  possible  for  men  to  hold  com- 
munion with  Him? 

The  answer  is :  knowledge  of  this  is  based  on  the 
fact  that  men  practically  everywhere  have  had  faith 
that  they  can  have,  and  have  had,  communion  with 
God.  In  other  words,  the  ground  of  faith  that  God 
is  personal  and  that  communion  with  God  is  possi- 
ble is  the  universal  consciousness  of  mankind.  On 
this  consciousness  all  the  religions  of  the  world 
have  been  built,  and  in  one  way  or  another  most 
individuals  of  the  race  have  had  conscious  commu- 
nion with  or  communications  from  God  or  a  god. 
Just  as  the  testimony  of  all  men  that  they  see  the 
sun  confirms  faith  in  the  existence  of  the  sun,  so  the 


THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

testimony  of  all  men  that  they  can  hold  communion 
with  God  affords  a  similarly  secure  basis  for  faith  in 
God's  existence  and  personality.  If  but  one  man 
saw  the  sun,  we  should  conclude  that  he  was  de- 
ceived; so  if  but  one  man  had  communion  with 
God,  we  should  justly  conclude  that  his  testimony 
might  be  the  wanderings  of  a  disordered  mind.  Men 
have  held  childish  notions,  mythological  notions 
about  the  sun;  they  have  held  childish  and  mytho- 
logical notions  about  God;  but  in  neither  case  does 
this  invalidate  their  testimony  to  the  main  fact.  In 
many  cases  appeal  can  be  made  to  the  inquirer's 
own  experience.  Perhaps  he  has  seen  moments 
when  he  at  least  thought  that  God  spoke  to  him  or 
he  had  communion  with  God.  In  the  light  of  the 
universal  testimony  of  mankind,  his  own  experience 
may  rekindle  his  faith. 

Every  life,  then,  becomes  a  little  laboratory  where 
God  may  be  discovered  and  where  His  existence 
may  be  proved.  How  are  scientific  discoveries 
made  in  a  modern  laboratory?  A  scientist  puts 
materials  together  in  some  new  combination  and 
experiments  with  them;  he  observes  the  effect  of 
his  new  combination  and  announces  the  result ;  im- 
mediately, in  other  laboratories  in  all  parts  of  the 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       193 

world,  the  experiment  is  tried  over  again.  If  no 
one  else  can  obtain  similar  results,  the  supposed  dis- 
covery is  discarded  as  a  mistake.  If  a  large  num- 
ber of  observers  do  obtain  the  same  results,  a  new 
fact  is  added  to  science.  If  there  are  a  few  excep- 
tions among  those  who  try  these  experiments,  i.e. 
if  a  few  fail  to  obtain  the  desired  results,  but  nearly 
all  investigators  do  obtain  them,  the  few  failures  do 
not  invalidate  the  discovery.  The  failures  are  to  be 
explained  by  some  imperfection  of  material  or 
method ;  by  the  temperature  of  the  laboratory  or  the 
qualifications  of  the  experimenter.  Not  otherwise 
is  it  in  the  laboratory  of  the  soul.  New  knowledge 
of  God  is  not  obtained  as  the  result  of  one  observa- 
tion, unless  other  seekers  find  the  experiment  veri- 
fied in  the  laboratories  of  their  own  experience. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  few  failures  do  not  invalidate 
the  general  result.  They  are  accounted  for  by  some 
spiritual  colour-blindness  on  the  part  of  the  observ- 
ers who  give  a  negative  report. 

The  knowledge  of  God,  then,  rests  on  a  basis 
similar  to  that  of  any  other  kind  of  knowledge 
possessed  by  men ;  it  rests  upon  first-hand  observa- 
tion and  experience;  it  is  the  result  of  millions  of 
observations  and  experiments  in  all  parts  of  the 
13 


194       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

world  extending  through  many  centuries.  If  whole 
nations  of  men  have  theorized  for  long  periods  on 
these  experiences  and  observations  in  ways  that  are 
now  seen  to  be  mistaken,  religious  knowledge  in 
this  respect  but  shares  the  fate  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge, for  again  and  again  has  this  occurred  in  the 
realm  of  science. 

The  basis  of  our  religious  knowledge  is,  then,  the 
religious  consciousness  of  man — man's  first-hand 
knowledge  of  God — knowledge  based  on  millions  of 
observations  and  corrected  by  frequent  conferences 
among  the  observers,  and  constantly  renewed  exper- 
iment. The  inquirer  may  test  it  in  his  own  labora- 
tory; if  he  will.  Having  laid  this  broad  foundation, 
\  we  may  go  a  step  further.  Our  scientific  knowl- 
edge rests  upon  simple  observations,  many  of  which 
any  person  can  test,  but,  nevertheless,  we  are  not 
all  scientists.  In  every  home  there  are  one  or  two 
persons  who  know  enough  to  do  the  cooking  and 
feed  the  family.  In  most  civilized  neighborhoods 
there  are  one  or  more  apothecaries,  who  know  just 
enough  of  science  to  mix  medicines  for  the  cure  of 
diseases.  In  such  communities  there  are  also  a  few 
men  who  know  enough  of  science  to  tell  the  apothe- 
caries how  to  mix  the  medicine  for  each  specific 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY 

disease.  There  are  very  few  who  know  enough  to 
make  discoveries  in  science.  These  few  push  on 
into  paths  before  untrodden;  they  grasp  new  truth, 
and,  teaching  it  to  other  men,  lead  the  doctors,  the 
apothecaries,  and  even  the  cooks,  out  into  new  paths. 
Even  the  common  man  knows  enough  of  the  funda- 
mental facts  and  axioms  on  which  science  rests  to 
give  him  confidence  in  the  results  of  those  who  ex- 
plore in  regions  into  which  he  cannot  follow.  The 
investigator  thus  becomes  the  teacher  of  all ;  others 
test  the  fringe  of  a  new  discovery,  doing  over  what 
the  investigator  tells  them  to  do,  and  lo !  they  obtain, 
at  least  in  part,  the  same  results. 

It  is  not  otherwise  in  religion.  Some  few  of  us 
have  just  about  a  cook's  knowledge  of  religious 
things;  we  can  get  nourishment;  though  most  of 
us  here  have  to  depend  largely  upon  other  people's 
cooking.  There  are  fewer  still  who  have  knowl- 
edge enough  to  heal  those  who  are  sick  in  soul,  but 
still  we  have  our  spiritual  physicians,  and  on  the 
whole  they  are  very  successful.  Far  fewer  are 
those  who,  working  out  from  the  common  religious 
knowledge,  have  penetrated  into  the  hitherto  un- 
known and  have  made  religious  discovery.  Thank 
God!  there  have  been  such  as  these.  They  have 


196        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

been  the  prophets  and  religious  teachers  of  the  race. 
They  have  not  been  infallible,  but  they  have  been 
rightly  the  religious  authorities  of  mankind.  The 
common  people  have  known  enough  of  the  implica- 
tions on  which  their  new  experiences  rested  to  fol- 
low their  teachings,  and  prove  their  value.  Such 
discoverers  were  Confucius,  and  Buddha,  and  Mo- 
hammed, and  Socrates;  here  we  place  the  Great 
Prophets — Moses,  Elijah,  Amos,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah, 
and  the  rest.  Here,  too,  we  put  Paul  and  the 
author  of  the  Johannine  writings,  St.  Augustine,  St. 
Francis,  Luther,  Zwingli,  George  Fox,  and  others. 
These  gain  their  authority  on  the  same  ground  that 
the  man  of  science  gains  his  authority.  It  is  just 
as  right  and  just  as  valid.  Their  authority  differs 
with  the  clearness  of  the  vision  of  each  and  the 
permanence  of  the  value  of  that  which  he  has  added 
to  religious  knowledge.  We  yield  them  obedience, 
not  because  they  possessed  a  faculty  of,  revelation 
which  has  been  lost,  but  because  in  experience  we 
can  test  the  validity  of  their  religious  discoveries 
and  find  them  true.  The  forces  which  gave  them 
their  greater  religious  knowledge  are  still  at  work, 
but  long  testing  of  their  results,  as  compared  with 
the  results  of  lesser  geniuses  in  the  religious  sphere, 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       197 

has  proved  the  value  of  the  vision  of  the  greatest 
seers  and  given  them  an  authority,  so  that,  as  in 
science  we  have  sat  at  the  feet  of  Copernicus  and 
Kepler,  of  Galileo  and  Newton,  of  Lyell  and  Dar- 
win, of  Champollion  and  Rawlinson,  in  religion  we 
sit  at  the  feet  of  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah,  of  Paul  and 
John,  or  whatever  the  author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
may  have  been  called. 

It  thus  comes  about  that  we  are  led  to  a  recogni- 
tion of  the  supreme  religious  authority  of  Jesus 


Christ,  for,  among  all  the  religious  seers  of  the  race, 
He  stands  supreme.  His  teachings,  tested  in  the 
laboratory  of  experience,  are  found  to  be  the  truest 
yet  given  to  the  world.  He  saw  more  deeply  than 
any  other  into  the  heart  of  God,  and  life,  and  duty. 
Compared  with  Him,  Buddha  and  Socrates,  the 
best  of  the  non- Jewish  pre-Christian  seers,  groped 
in  the  twilight.  Although  it  is  clear  that  the 
roots  of  His  nature  struck  deep  into  the  divine 
nature  far  beyond  those  of  others,  He  lived  a 
human  life,  He  shared  our  sufferings,  He  spoke 
our  human  language.  The  consensus  of  the  world's 
best  religious  judgment  accords  Him  a  supreme 
place,  because  He  speaks  to  the  deep  needs  of 
humanity  as  no  other  has  spoken.  His  voice  wakens 


198      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

echoes  within  the  soul  that  are  awakened  by  no 
other  voice;  He  touches  chords  which  vibrate  to 
no  other  touch.  His  word  as  to  God's  Father- 
hood is  the  most  satisfying  thought  yet  uttered; 
His  teachings  as  to  human  duties  are  seen  to  be 
incomparably  above  all  others.  Even  a  present- 
day  Socialist,  as  he  denounces  the  Church  as  the 
club  of  a  privileged  class,  reverences  Jesus  Christ, 
declaring  that  Christianity  has  never  been  really 
tried. 

In  the  light  which  comes  from  Jesus  Christ  we 
look  back  again  over  the  seers  of  the  race,  and  we 
conclude  that  those  who  came  of  His  people  and 
prepared  the  way  for  Him,  and  those  who  fol- 
lowed as  His  successors,  when  judged  with  severe 
fairness,  grasped  a  message  of  more  living  and 
permanent  significance  than  those  who  were  of 
other  religious  pedigrees.  It  is  not  merely  that  we 
are  more  familiar  with  them  that  the  words  of 
Hosea,  Isaiah,  Paul,  and  John  search  us  with  a 
power  which  those  of  Confucius,  Buddha,  Socrates, 
and  Mohammed  do  not.  The  enlightened  soul 
finds  in  the  Biblical  seers  a  different  quality.  In 
the  end,  then,  the  modern  Christian  comes  back 
to  a  point  where  he  acknowledges  the  authority  of 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY 

Christ  as  supreme.    He  can  say  with  Whittier: — 

"O  Lord  and  Master  of  us  all! 
Whate'er  our  name  or  sign, 
We  own  Thy  sway,  we  hear  Thy  call, 
We  test  our  lives  by  Thine." 

But  some  one  is,  perhaps,  asking,  If  there  is  no 
real  distinction  between  the  natural  and  the  super- 
natural, what  becomes  of  the  divinity  of  Christ? 
If  God  is  in  nature  and  in  man,  so  that  nature  and 
man  are  divine,  is  Christ  Divine  in  any  sense  in 
which  these  are  not?  Yes:  He  is.  The  emphasis 
which  we  are  placing  on  the  testimony  of  conscious- 
ness brings  to  light  the  proof  that  He  is.  He  only, 
of  all  men  of  our  race,  has  been  conscious  of  com- 
plete moral  union  with  God.  That  consciousness, 
combined  with  His  sane  life  and  matchless  teaching, 
is  proof  that  He  enjoyed  a  higher,  a  more  complete, 
a  more  unique  Sonship  than  any  other  has  known. 
His  nature  sent  its  roots  more  deeply  into  the 
Divine  Personality  than  any  other,  so  that  He  is 
not  only  Master  but  in  a  unique  sense  the  Son  of 
God.  No  form  of  faith  long  retains  its  power  to 
move  men  unless  it  recognizes  this.  No  mere 
philosophy  or  ethical  culture  alone  will  long  prove 
a  satisfying  message  to  large  numbers  of  men  in 
this  century  any  more  than  in  any  preceding.  The 


2OO       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

essential  element  of  power  in  the  Gospel  Message  of 
the  twentieth  century,  as  of  other  centuries,  is  that 
"God  was  in  Christ."  As  in  other  centuries,  so 
now,  the  Gospel  which  loses  the  Divine  uniqueness 
of  Christ  loses  its  power.  It  may  be  intellectual 
and  aesthetic,  but  it  will  prove  to  be  no  Gospel.  The 
modern  Christian,  too,  values  the  Bible  and  the 
Church.  He  has  swept  away,  it  is  true,  some 
ancient  fictions  regarding  them.  The  notions  of 
science  which  ancient  saints  entertained  in  their 
respective  generations  he  casts  aside.  Their  crude 
morality  is  for  him  no  longer  a  pattern ;  but  wher- 
ever a  noble  soul  has  grasped  more  of  God  than  his 
fellows,  and  added  a  permanent  contribution  to 
man's  knowledge  of  God,  or  wherever  a  group  of 
saints  have  lived  the  truth  in  effective  reality,  the 
man  of  today  is  ready  to  sit  at  their  feet  in  things 
spiritual,  that  he  may  learn  the  secret  of  their  power. 
We  therefore  accord  to  Church,  to  Bible,  and  to 
Christ  the  real  and  right  authority  which  each  has 
ever  possessed  (although  we  do  not  permit  that 
"  authority  to  nullify  the  divine  Voice  which  still 
speaks  in  the  souls  of  Christians),  because  we  find 
in  Church,  in  the  Bible,  and  in  Christ  notable  ex- 
amples, in  varying  degrees  of  clearness,  of  the  fact 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       2OI 

that  God  and  man  meet  in  the  human  spirit.     On 

flMWMHM0*0HMU***aM  ^•••^•^••••••••••••^••••••^•••^ 

the  whole,  we  have  in  the  religious  teachers  thus 
represented  the  most  notable  examples  of  religious 
discovery  in  the  history  of  the  race,  and  Christ  is 
the  Master  of  them  all.  In  other  words,  wereach 

•^^•^^^^ 

our  recognition  of  authority  by  way  of  the  religious 
consciousness  of  man.  We  thus  ground  authority 
upon  a  secure  basis,  place  its  different  exponents  in 
proper  perspective,  and  put  it  in  a  form  to  com- 
mend it  to  the  twentieth  century. 

Having  led  our  inquirer  to  recognize  that  the 
claims  of  Christ  as  supreme  Teacher  and  Son  of 
God  rest  on  a  basis  as  solid  as  that  of  any  great  con- 
temporary scientific  leader,  we  must  next  try  to 
make  clear  to  him  Christ's  message  concerning  God 
and  man. 

The  supreme  message  of  Christ  about  God  is  that 
God  is  Love — God  is  a  Father — God  is  Christ-like.. 
The  human  heart  in  the  midst  of  a  universe  of 
cosmic  forces  longs  for  love.  Many  a  modern  cul- 
tured man  as  he  looks  at  the  tremendous  sweep  of 
nature  and  her  forces  inwardly  cries  out,  as  he 
realizes  the  yearnings  of  his  heart  and  his  own 
insignificance, 

".What  does  the  cosmic  vastness  care  1" 


THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

Chris  a^Js  tha^jpdcares.    The  one  heart 

among  all  the  men  of  our  racethat  knew  God  best 
declares  that  God  is  not  a  cosmic  vastness,  hat  a 
tender  personality;  that  He  is  not  an  unfeeling 
force,  hot  a  Christ-like  friend;  that  He  does  not 
hold  Himself  immeasurably  above  us  as  the  Abso- 
lute and  Unknowable,  but  that  in  spite  of  all  our 
MB»*MM.  and  sin  He  is  fotgit  lag  ;  that  He  invites 
us  to  His  fellowship;  that  He  needs  our  lives  for 
the  completion  of  His  purposes,  as  much  as  we  need 
Him  for  the  whining  of  our  own  personalities. 

The  message  of  Christ  invites  man  into  personal 
social  relations  with  God.  John  Caird1  and  George 
A.  Gordon1  have  taught  us  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  —  a  doctrine  which  seems  to  many  modern 
men  unreal  and  remote—  has  always  stood  for  the 
social  nature  of  God.  The  heart  of  all  social  qual- 
ities is  love.  Because  God  is  eternally  social  He 
is  eternally  loving.  This  love  is  so  all-embracing 
that  it  is  satisfied  only  as  it  finds  such  a  response 
in  the  hearts  of  His  children  that  each  one  is  united 
with  Him  in  a  life  of  affection  and  moral  purpose. 
As  Srfuftgr  IMS  said,  "Man  is  incurably  religious," 
Idtus  of  Ckristiamty,  Glasgow,  1899,  Lee- 


Hi. 

*Utiim*»*Comc*ptumof  t*e  Fat**,  Boston,  1903,  pp.  370  ff. 


MESSAGE  FOB  THE  TWENTIETH  CESTOBY       2O3 

and  to  such  a  message,  if  properly  presented,  men 
win  respond.  In  the  midst  of  our  social  travail  and 
longing  and  aspirations  the  reality  which  lies  behind 
the  formal  doctrine  of  the  Trinity— the  fact  that 
God  represents  in  Himself  society;  that  He  is, 
accordingly,  eternally  intelligent  and  loving;  that 
the  eternal  -forces  of  the  universe  are  fighting:  <» 
die  side  of  love  and  goodness  and  the  highest  social 
jf^Kti^  and  longings— comes  as  a  balm  and  an 
inspiration.  This  elenient  b  to  play  an  increasingly 
large  part  in  the  Christian  Message  of  the  twentieth 
century* 

God  is  eternally  social.  He  invites  men  to  His 
fellowship.  He  would  make  each  man  a  member  of 
His  family.  Yes,  more  than  tins,  He  would  make 
each  fife  a  temple  of  His — He  would  fin  it  with 
Himself.  God  has  made  every  man  hungry  for 
God;  in  the  historic  Christ  He  has  supplied  objec- 
tively the  knowledge  about  Himself  that  was  neces- 
sary in  order  that  man  might  find  God  and  have  his 
hunger  «tkfed,  To  profit  br  the  knowledge  one 
must  put  it  into  practice.  "He  mat  wiHem  to  da 
His  win  shan  know  of  the  teaching."  Here  men 
are  anew  invited  to  apply  me  ffirifirtfnc  mediod  of 
which  our  grurtjUnu  is  so  fond,  and  to  try  in  the 


2O4       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

laboratory  of  experience  the  validity  of  the  instruc- 

• 

tion  of  the  supreme  Teacher. 

Or,  to  put  the  Christian  Message  in  a  slightly 
different  way,  all  men  are  God's  children,  but  they 
have  most  of  them  never  really  enjoyed  the  priv- 
ileges of  their  sonship.  Jesus  Christ,  whose  claims 
to  a  unique  Sonship  rest  upon  the  solid  foundation 
which  we  have  sketched,  came  to  help  all  men  to 
realize  the  full  joys  of  their  sonship.  If  again  we 
endeavour  to  state  the  Christian  Message  biolog- 
ically, it  would  be  something  like  this :  God,  by  the 
process  of  physical  evolution,  completed  man's  body 
long  ago;  He  is  now  engaged  in  completing  the 
inner  life  of  man.  The  inner,  spiritual  life  cannot 
be  perfected  by  blind  forces  pushing  from  behind, 
such  as  perfected  the  human  body ;  it  must  be  per- 
fected by  a  powerful  ideal  alluring  from  before.  It 
must  be  stimulated  by  social  union  with  the  highest 
personality,  God.  In  Christ,  God  revealed  the  allur- 
ing ideal;  in  Christ,  He  opened  the  way  for  this 
fellowship  with  Himself  by  revealing  His  heart  of 
love.  He  extended  by  word  the  invitation  to  come 
into  close  fellowship  with  God,  He  interpreted  it 
through  a  self-sacrificing  life  of  service,  He  voiced 
it  by  giving  Himself  to  death.  God  in  Him  appeals 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY      2O5 

to  the  deepest  instincts  of  man,  and  to  the  strongest 
motives  latent  in  human  personality.  He  offers  us 
the  satisfaction  of  our  strongest  social  instincts. 

The  Christian  Message  has  for  centuries  been 
conceived  as  the  payment  of  an  infinite  debt,  or  the 
bearing  of  an  infinite  penalty.  This  legal  con- 
ception has  made  much  of  sin  as  an  offence  against 
a  Sovereign  of  infinite  majesty.  On  the  biological 
view,  which  is  today  prevailing  more  and  more,  sin 
is  wilful  immaturity  or  wilful  disease.  The  work  of 
Christ  is  accordingly  more  and  more  seen  to  be  God's 
means  of  awakening  the  soul  to  its  needs,  and  of 
bringing  it  into  fellowship  with  Himself.  It  is  at 
once  the  cure  for  man's  deadly  sickness,  and  the 
means  of  bringing  him  to  maturity. 

In  this  work  of  awakening  men,  the  life,  the 
teaching,  and  the  character  of  Christ  must  in  the 
twentieth  century  take  a  more  prominent  place  in 
the  proclamation  of  the  Gospel  than  ever  before, 
but  His  suffering  for  men  will,  as  in  the  past,  con- 
tinue to  be  the  most  appealing  part  of  his  work. 
He  gave  Himself  unselfishly  to  the  horrible  death 
of  the  cross,  to  reveal  to  the  uttermost  His  love  and 
God's  love.  This  fact  will  continue  to  touch  the 
springs  of  feeling  with  unique  power,  and  to  move 


2O6       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

wills  to  consecration  and  endeavour.  As  men  realize 
that  this  suffering  was  not  directed  toward  God  to 
influence  Him,  but  toward  man  for  his  awakening, 
and  that  it  was  not  a  part  of  an  artificial  legal 
scheme,  but  the  natural  outgoing  of  the  divinest 
love  for  the  accomplishment  of  its  holy  ends,  men 
will  look  through  the  sufferings  of  Christ  into  the 
heart  of  God  as  through  a  window,  and  be  moved 
to  all  that  is  noble  by  the  depths  of  the  unselfish  and 
agonizing  love  which  they  behold  there.1 

It  is  this  last  thought  which,  when  grasped,  is 
most  powerful  to  persuade.  If  Christ's  suffering 
reveals  the  suffering  of  God,  that  suffering  was 
not  done  once  for  all,  but  is  still  in  progress.  No 
life  is  ruined  by  sin  without  wringing  His  heart; 
no  individual  refuses  to  make  real  the  divine  ideal 
for  his  life  without  bringing  to  an  end  in  his  per- 
son a  long  line  of  influences  for  the  regeneration  of 
the  world,  which  should  have  been  passed  on  with 
accelerated  power.  He  thus  thwarts  the  divine 
purpose,  retards  the  coming  of  the  kingdom,  and 
thereby  extends  the  age-long  agony  of  the  loving 
Father.  Could  any  other  thought  so  powerfully 

1  For  more  extensive  treatment  of  this  point,  see  the  writer's 
Roots  of  Christian  Teaching  as  found  in  the  Old  Testament, 
chapters  xiii.,  xiv. 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       2O/ 

dissuade  from  sin?  No  man  suffers  in  the  strife 
with  sin,  but  God  suffers  with  him.  The  suffering 
of  Jesus  Christ  is  witness  to  the  fact  that  God  suf- 
fers with  all  the  sufferings  of  His  children  as  they 
fight  for  the  elimination  of  the  slum,  for  purity  in 
politics,  as  they  carry  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen,  or 
in  any  field  by  loving  service  take  up  the  redemp- 
tive work  of  the  Son  of  Man.  Could  any  other 
thought  so  nerve  the  worker  to  noble  and  Christ-like 
endeavour?  Love  involves  suffering.  Love  is  the 
highest  fruit  of  the  social  life.  The  atoning  suffer- 
ing is  the  inevitable  corollary  of  the  eternally  social 
nature  of  God. 

••••••••••••••••••MWi^ 

Interpreted  in  this  way,  the  Gospel  gains  in  power 
and  in  clearness.  It  meets  men's  needs  as  they  are 
understood  in  the  light  of  the  evolutionary  science 
of  today,  and  it  meets  the  situation  much  more 
vitally  than  it  was  formerly  thought  to  do.  Inter- 
preted as  the  payment  of  a  debt,  or  as  the  bearing 
of  a  judicial  penalty,  or  as  a  governmental  measure 
to  prevent  further  rebellion,  the  work  of  Christ 
appears  artificial  and  unreal;  interpreted  as  God 
working  on  sound  psychological  and  biological 
principles  for  the  completion  of  the  creation  of  man, 
it  is  unrivalled  in  vital  power  and  in  moral  beauty. 


2C)8       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

.But  the  significance  of  this  message,  as  we  must 
present  it  to  the  men  of  today,  lies  in  the  fact  that 
it  introduces  them  to  a  first-hand  experience  of  God. 
Of  this  we  must  not  lose  sight.  Christianity  lived 
on  faith  in  the  experience  of  others  has  proved  itself 
a  poor  thing.  Men  desire  reality  now,  and  God 
means  that  they  shall  have  it.  It  was  this  first-hand 
experience  which  made  the  Apostolic  age  so  power- 
ful. It  is  our  duty  now  to  go  to  every  man  and 
say :  Christ  does  not  ask  you  to  submit  to  authority ; 
He  invites  you  to  come  and  know  God  for  your- 
selves ;  if  you  will,  you  may  share  in  the  experiences 
which  made  the  world's  heroes  happy,  heroic,  and 
triumphant 

But  here  we  shall  be  met  by  a  difficulty.  God  is 
most  often  known  in  the  soul  through  mystic  ex- 
periences— through  experiences  which,  however  in- 
tellectual they  may  be,  are  characterized  by  a  stir- 
ring of  the  emotions — an  exalted,  sublime  feeling 
which  warms  the  soul  and  makes  it  conscious  of 
the  stirrings  of  a  higher  life  within  us.  I  have  two 
friends  who  say  that  they  have  never  experienced 
this  mystic  emotion.  They  are  both  Christian  men, 
but  they  declare  that  for  them  such  feeling  is  im- 
possible. I  have  heard  one  of  them  declare,  with 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       2CK) 

tears  in  his  eyes,  that  he  would  give  anything  to 
enjoy  the  satisfaction  of  such  emotion,  and  I  have 
heard  the  other  one  say  that  if  such  feelings  are 
necessary  to  a  Christian,  he  can  never  be  one,  for 
they  are,  on  account  of  his  peculiar  temperament, 
impossible  to  him.  He  would  substitute  for  such 
mystic  experiences  a  satisfaction  of  mind,  and  the 
strengthening  of  the  ethical  elements  of  the  will,  as 
the  channels  through  which  one  may  know  God. 

In  the  past  we  have  been  too  narrow  in  this 
respect.  We  have  based  first-hand  knowledge  of 
God  too  exclusively  on  the  feelings.  It  is  the  "up- 
right who  shall  see  God,"  and  noble  living  is  one 
important  channel  of  knowledge  of  Him.  But  to 
most  of  those  who  live  nobly  sooner  or  later  some 
witness  of  emotion  comes.  Most  people  behold  the 
light  with  eyes,  but  those  whose  eyes  are  sightless 
learn  through  the  warmth  of  the  sun  that  the  great 
source  of  light  exists.  We  may  be  grateful  that  it 
is  possible  for  men  to  know  God  through  the  mental 
satisfaction  that  comes  to  them  as  they  endeavour 
to  do  right — that  they  know  Him  through  the  moral 
satisfaction  which  the  ethical  will  gives,  but  we  may 
be  more  grateful  that  God  does  not  relegate  us  all  to 
such  cold  satisfaction.  To  the  great  majority  God 
14 


2IO       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

will  continue  to  make  Himself  known  by  touching 
the  springs  of  feeling,  although  feeling  is  refined 
and  exalted  by  training  of  the  mind.  Through 
this  sublimated  feeling  God  will  continue  in  most 
men  to  reach  the  will.  But  the  one  thing  on  which 
we  insist  is  that  -every  man,  each  in  his  own  way, 
may  know  God,  may  have  personal  access  to  Him, 
and  personal  experience  of  Him,  whether  in  some 
the  intellectual  element,  or  in  others  the  emotional, 
be  the  stronger.  This  is  an  indispensable  element 
of  the  Christian  Message  of  today. 

But  in  large  part  the  Christian  Message  should 
be  addressed  to  Christians.  Christians  do  not  begin 
to  realize  the  obligations  which  this  Apostolic, 
modern  Christian  Message  imposes  upon  them.  If 
we  are  temples  of  God,  "what  manner  of  persons 
ought  we  to  be  in  all  manner  of  holy  conversation 
and  godliness?"  I  do  not  mean  that  we  should 
withdraw  from  the  world,  or  talk  "cant,"  or  wear  a 
peculiar  dress,  but  God  should  so  shine  in  our 
characters  and  deeds  that  life  would  have  a  new 
smell,  to  borrow  George  Fox's  phrase,  to  all  whom 
we  could  influence.  Our  lives,  because  of  their  high 
ethical  quality  and  spirit,  should  be  a  meeting-place 
where  other  men  may  find  God. 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       211 

Such  was  the  case  in  the  early  centuries.  The 
author  of  the  Epistle  to  Diogtietus,  and  Aristides  in 
his  Apology,  tell  of  the  life  of  the  early  Christians. 
They  wore  the  same  dress  as  the  people  about  them, 
they  spoke  the  language  of  other  people,  but  they 
were  pervaded  by  a  different  spirit,  and  a  different 
type  of  unselfish  ethics  prevailed  among  them. 
Professor  Dobschiitz,  in  his  book  on  the  life  of  the 
early  Christians,1  has,  as  noted  in  a  former  chapter, 
shown  by  indisputable  proof  that  in  the  early  Church 
the  consciousness  that  men  came  into  direct  contact 
with  God,  and  lived  in  fellowship  with  Him,  created 
a  new  type  of  individual  and  of  society.  The  same 
thing  happened  again  in  the  time  of  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi,  and  made  the  Franciscan  movement  the 
sensation  of  the  thirteenth  century.  How  this  same 
belief  in  direct  communion  with  God  led  George 
Fox  and  his  followers  to  a  new  and  higher  standard 
of  Christian  living — a  standard  which  has  made  the 
name  Quaker  a  synonym  of  trustworthiness — is  well 
known.  If  the  heart  of  the  twentieth-century 
Christian  Message  is  the  Gospel  of  personal  union 
with  God,  it  must  be  proclaimed  through  lives  which 
evince  the  fruits  of  such  divine  indwelling.  These 

1  Christian  Life  in  the  Primitive  Church. 


212       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

fruits  must  be  exhibited  in  even  greater  quantity, 
and,  if  possible,  in  finer  quality,  than  ever  before, 
for  now  it  is  on  such  fruits  alone,  and  not  on  super- 
natural sanctions,  that  the  Gospel  must  depend  for 
its  credentials.  For  good  or  for  ill  the  supernatural, 
as  formerly  understood,  has  lost  hold  on  our  age. 
Many  who  do  not  deny  miracles  find  them  most 
difficult  of  belief.  Christianity  may  help  men  to 
belief  in  a  new  supernatural,  called,  perhaps,  by 
some  more  appropriate  name,  but  the  old  super- 
natural will  never  again  help  men  who  live  in 
the  present  intellectual  movement  to  believe  in 
Christianity. 

This  call  to  high  Christian  living  and  new  Chris- 
tian ethics  applies  with  supreme  force  to  the  indi- 
vidual, demanding  in  each  one  purity,  unselfishness, 
joy,  and  self-sacrificing  service;  but  it  applies  as 
never  before  to  Christian  society  as  a  whole.  There 
are  problems  of  social  and  industrial  organization 
which  Christianity  has  never  solved.  These  are 
confronting  the  twentieth  century.  Unless  Chris- 
tianity, as  it  is  embodied  in  us  and  men  and  women 
like  us,  has  a  practical  message  concerning  these 
things,  it  will  seem  to  an  increasing  number  of  the 
people  an  idle  tale.  The  world  is  demanding,  not 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       213 

only  personal  righteousness  but  social  righteousness. 
Men  are  not  asking  for  charity  but  for  industrial 
and  social  justice.  They  are  demanding  an  organi- 
zation of  our  outward  life  that  shall  give  every  man 
a  chance,  and  that  shall  fairly  distribute  the  products 
of  the  complex  labour  of  modern  society.  What 
they  are  really  demanding,  though  they  do  not 
know  it,  is  that  the  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ  shall  be 
embodied,  not  only  in  our  characters  but  in  our 
institutions;  that  it  shall  rule  in  the  Church,  where 
at  most  its  manifestations  have  hitherto  been  spo- 
radic only;  that  it  shall  rule  in  our  politics,  which 
are  as  yet  practically  untouched  by  it;  that  it  shall 
prevail  in  our  corporations  and  in  our  trade  unions, 
and  teach  "every  man  to  look  not  only  on  his  own 
things,  but  also  on  the  things  of  others,"  not  as 
men  now  fulfil  this  injunction  of  St.  Paul,  with 
eyes  of  covetousness,  but  with  the  eyes  of  brotherly 
consideration.  This  can  never  be  till  Christian  life 
reaches  a  higher  level  than  it  has  ever  yet  reached, 
unless  it  was  in  Christianity's  earliest  dawn.  How 
far  beyond  our  present  poor  conceptions  of  Chris- 
tian living  must  we  not  go,  in  order  to  make  our 
city  governments  pure,  to  wipe  out  the  slum,  to  make 
the  submerged  tenth  respectable  members  of  society, 


214       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

to  cure  the  social  evil,  to  make  our  corporations  deal 
with  their  employees  as  with  Christian  brothers,  and 
our  organized  labour  deal  with  employers  as  Christ 
would  deal  with  them,  to  abolish  war  and  substitute 
arbitral  justice,  to  carry  education,  civilization,  and 
Christ  to  the  dark  parts  of  Asia  and  Africa,  until 
the  United  States  of  the  World  shall  not  only  be  an 
accomplished  fact,  but  shall  be  a  veritable  Kingdom 
of  Christ!  These  are  some  of  the  tasks  awaiting 
the  Church  of  Christ.  Men  think  to  accomplish 
these  things  by  social  panaceas,  or  by  changing  the 
methods  of  distribution ;  but  no  method  of  distribu- 
tion or  of  social  organization,  useful  as  these  may 
be,  will  produce  the  desired  result.  Human  nature 
must  be  changed;  the  animal  spirit  eradicated;  the 
Christ  spirit  substituted.  God  only  can  do  this; 
the  message  of  Christ  inviting  man  to  a  life  with 
God  is  the  means  by  which  He  would  accomplish  it. 
The  message  for  the  present  is,  then,  the  great 
privilege  of  personal  union  with  God — first-hand 
experience  of  Him — an  experience  which  is  the  one 
pathway  to  the  highest  personal  development  and 
salvation,  but  which  also  involves,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  necessity  of  sharing  the  self-sacrificing  life  of 
God  as  that  life  is  revealed  in  Christ,  in  a  sense  in 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       215 

which  His  Church  has  not  yet  shared  it,  and,  on 
the  other,  the  unspeakable  privilege  of  becoming  a 
fellow-worker  with  God  in  completing  the  evolu- 
tion of  humanity  by  wiping  out  the  slum,  redeeming 
society,  Christianizing  the  world,  and  making  it  one 
family. 

On  this  side  the  work  should  appeal  to  every 
gallant  young  soul.  We  are  as  yet  but  just  in  the 
morning  of  time.  The  beginnings  of  civilization  in 
its  earliest  centres  occurred  only  some  seven  thou- 
sand years  ago.  The  late  Professor  Shaler,  of 
Harvard,  in  his  last  book1  declared  that,  so  far  as 
any  scientist  can  see,  the  earth  may  still  go  on  with 
man  living  upon  it  for  one  hundred  millions  of  years 
into  the  future.  We  cannot  imagine  such  a  stretch 
of  time !  It  is  like  an  eternity  to  us !  However 
this  opinion  may  be  corrected  in  the  future,  it  is 
more  nearly  true  than  the  old  Apocalyptic  visions 
of  the  end  of  the  world.  To  the  old  motive  of  sav- 
ing souls  for  eternity  there  is  now  added  the  motive 
of  building  a  perfect  society  upon  the  earth  for  what, 
to  our  human  imaginations,  is  almost  an  eternity. 
With  God  in  us,  and  such  duties  and  privileges 
about  us,  "what  manner  of  persons  ought  we  to  be 

1  Man  and  the  Earth,  1905,  cf.  pp.  161,  217,  224,  and  226. 


2l6       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

in  all  holy  living1  and  godliness!"  Gallant  service 
full  of  danger,  with  possible  glory  at  the  end,  has 
always  appealed  to  the  young.  I  feel  confident 
that  if  the  opportunities  and  difficulties  of  the  pres- 
ent situation,  together  with  a  real  vision  of  God  as 
He  is  revealed  in  Christ,  could  be  grasped  by  the 
young  men  and  women  of  our  time,  there  would 
be  such  a  Christian  revival,  such  a  wave  of  conse- 
cration, as  we  have  not  yet  seen. 

A  young  poet,  in  a  poem  published  in  the  Inde- 
pendent, July  2,  1908,  has  happily  expressed,  in 
speaking  of  another  theme,  what  I  would  say  of 
this— 

"Meseems  it  renders  God  great  joy  to  see 
Hands  striving  after  His  creatively, 
Yea,  that  He  even  left  a  part   undone 
That  we  might  finish  that  by  Him  begun 
And  help  Him  with  our  efforts  to  erect 
His  house,  as  masons  help  an  architect. 

If  this  be  true,  that  He  of  us  hath  need, 
Oh,  then  are  we  the  sons  of  God,  indeed !" 

Do  you  ask  me  whether  all  the  world  is  ready  for 
the  Christian  Message  as  I  have  tried  to  set  it  forth 
today?  I  answer,  God  did  not  cease  to  make  fishes 
when  He  began  to  make  quadrupeds,  nor  did  He 
cease  to  make  quadrupeds  when  He  began  to  make 
men.  Each  new  form  of  life  has  added  to  the 


MESSAGE  FOR  THE  TWENTIETH  CENTURY       21 7 

complexity  of  the  life  of  the  world.  Similarly, 
there  are  people  still  living  in  the  thought  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  These  regard  Protestantism 
as  infidelity.  To  such  the  Church  of  Rome  still  has 
a  mission.  Others  have  not  parsed  beyond  the 
thought  of  the  seventeenth  or  eighteenth  centuries. 
These  regard  the  new  theology  as  infidelity.  To 
these  a  legal  or  governmental  interpretation  of  the 
Atonement  still  has  value.  It  would  be  a  great  mis- 
fortune if  either  the  teachings  of  the  Church  of 
Rome  or  of  the  older  Protestant  theologians  should 
cease  at  once.  But  some  of  us  have  learned  through 
bitter  struggle  that  to  insist  on  the  eternal  validity 
of  some  teachings  of  the  past  makes  a  Christian 
life  impossible  for  the  twentieth-century  man.  We 
have  learned,  too,  through  surprisingly  joyous  ex- 
perience, that  a  religious  life,  nurtured  by  Christ  as 
He  is  interpreted  through  the  new  forms  of  thought, 
is  as  much  richer  than  the  religious  life  nurtured 
on  the  teachings  of  John  Calvin,  as  the  religious  life 
of  the  Puritan  was  deeper,  richer,  and  more  real 
than  that  of  the  Romanist.  To  the  great  mass  of 
intelligent  readers  in  our  modern  world,  such  as 
are  every  year  entering  active  life  from  our  col- 
leges, the  line  of  appeal  must  be  something  like  that 


2l8        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  MESSAGE 

which  I  have  here  endeavored  to  outline — a  knowl- 
edge of  God  scientifically  grounded  on  a  broad 
basis  of  universal  experience,  but  finding  its  supreme 
revelation  in  Christ,  a  first-hand  personal  experience 
of  God,  and  a  heroic  life  which  shall  reveal  God 
to  other  people,  with  the  added  privilege  of  becom- 
ing helpers  of  God  at  this  creative  epoch  of  the 
world's  history  in  completing  the  creation  of  the 
world  and  of  man.  This  privilege  can  only  be  fully 
entered  upon  by  those  who  so  love  God,  and  who 
so  share  in  His  love  for  men,  that  they  are  ready 
to  participate  also  in  God's  sufferings. 

The  world  does  not  need  a  new  Gospel,  but  the 
old  Gospel  told  and  lived  in  such  a  way  that  it  will 
be  possible  for  men  to  believe  it  true — so  lived  and 
told  that  the  Gospel  will  be  seen  to  be  the  one 
indispensable  help  to  the  completion  of  life.  It 
needs  the  Gospel  so  presented  through  holy  lives, 
and  so  worked  into  the  warp  and  woof  of  daily 
existence  that  it  will  be  seen  to  have  a  social  and 
economic  value  beyond  all  earthly  things  for  the 
life  that  now  is,  as  well  as  to  be  the  beginning  of 
the  life  which  is  to  come. 


''I ""HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of 
•*•     books  by  the  same  author  or  on  kindred  subjects. 


A  Sketch  of  Semitic  Origins,  Social  and  Religious 

BY  GEORGE  AARON  BARTON,  A.M.,  PH.D. 

Professor  of  Biblical  Literature  and  Semitic  Languages  in  Bryn  Mawr 

College 

Cloth,  8vo,  34.2 pages,  $3.00  net 

Dr.  Barton  vividly  traces  the  course  of  Semitic  evolution  through 
the  weary  centuries  which  lead  from  savagery  to  civilization.  The 
book  contains  much  valuable  information  in  regard  to  the  socio- 
logical literature  and  theories  of  the  times,  and  is  altogether  a  most 
important  and  scholarly  contribution  to  our  knowledge  of  those 
vague  periods. 

FRANK  BYRON  JEVONS'S 
An  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion 

Third  Edition.    Cloth,  8vo,  415  pages,  $2.50  net;  by  mail,  $2.62 

The  history  of  early  religion  is  here  investigated  on  the  principles 
and  methods  of  anthropology ;  it  was  intended  primarily  for  students 
who  require  an  introduction  to  the  history  of  religion,  but  has  proved 
of  interest  to  students  of  folklore,  and  to  the  wider  circle  of  general 
readers.  It  accomplishes  what  no  other  work  in  the  same  field 
does,  in  the  direction  of  summarizing  the  results  of  recent  anthro- 
pology, estimating  their  bearing  upon  religious  problems,  and  weav- 
ing the  whole  into  a  connected  history  of  early  religion. 

A  Psychological  Study  of  Religion 

BY  JAMES  H.  LEUBA 
Professor  of  Psychology  in  Bryn  Mawr  College 

Cloth,  8vo,  $2.00  net 

Here,  Professor  Leuba,  who  has  written  a  great  many  articles  upon 
the  psychology  of  religion,  gives  a  systematic  presentation  of  his 
views  on  the  nature  of  religion  as  a  type  of  human  behavior ;  on  the 
origin  and  development  of  magic  and  religion ;  on  the  relation  of 
religion  to  mythology,  metaphysics,  morality,  and  psychology ;  and 
on  the  religion  of  the  future. 


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The  Bible  for  Home  and  School 

Edited  by  SHAILER  MATHEWS,  D.D.,  Dean  of  the  Divinity 
School,  and  Professor  of  Historical  and  Comparative  Theology  in 
the  University  of  Chicago,  Editor  of  the  Series  of"  New  Testament 
Handbooks,"  etc. 

"  Biblical  science  has  progressed  rapidly  during  the  past  few  years,  but  the 
reader  still  lacks  a  brief  but  comprehensive  commentary  that  shall  extend 
to  him  in  usable  form  material  now  at  the  disposition  of  the  student.  It  is 
hoped  that  in  this  series  the  needs  of  intelligent  Sunday-school  teachers 
have  been  met,  as  well  as  those  of  clergymen  and  lay  readers,  and  that  in 
scope,  purpose,  and  loyalty  to  the  Scriptures  as  a  foundation  of  Christian 
thought  and  life,  its  volumes  will  stimulate  the  intelligent  use  of  the  Bible  in 
the  home  and  the  school."  —  From  the  General  Introduction  to  the  Series. 

Each  volume  is  convenient  in  size,. well  printed  on  excellent  paper, 
and  attractively  and  serviceably  bound. 


VOLUMES  NOW  READY 

THE  EPISTLE  TO  THE  HEBREWS 

By  EDGAR  J.  GOODSPEED,  Assistant  Professor  of  Biblical  and 
Patristic  Greek  in  the  University  of  Chicago. 

Cloth,  ix-\-i^2  pages.    Price,  50  cents  net  by  mail 

"  It  is  scholarly  and  modern,  yet  simple,  a  truly  interpretive  commentary, 
not  uncritical,  though  criticism  is  not  obtruded,  not  without  the  results  of 
keen  philological  study,  though  the  reader  sees  little  or  nothing  of  the  pro- 
cesses. The  Epistle  becomes  an  illuminating  exponent  of  the  spiritual  life  of 
its  time."  —  BENJAMIN  W.  BACON  in  the  Yale  Divinity  Quarterly. 

Being  the  second  volume  of  Luke's  work  on  the  Beginnings  of 
Christianity,  with  interpretative  comment. 

By  GEORGE  HOLLEY  GILBERT,  Ph.D.,  D.D. 

Cloth,  267  pages.    Price,  75  cents  net ;  by  mail,  81  cents 

"  Dr.  Mathews  and  his  fellow-editors  are  performing  a  task  for  the  Church 
of  to-day  that  should  be  far-reaching  in  its  results;  for  there  is  pressing  need 
that  the  rank  and  file  of  Bible  students  be  equipped  with  the  material  for  an 
historical  interpretation.  This  is  a  necessary  step  to  the  creation  of  a  theol- 
ogy which  is  in  harmony  with  the  present  age,  wherein  all  science  is  studied 
historically;  and,  furthermore,  the  transition  from  the  traditional  to  the  his- 
torical view  will  be  furthered  through  the  production  of  such  aids  to  Bible 
study  as  those  under  review,  rather  than  through  theoretical  discussions  on 
the  relative  merits  of  the  respective  views."  —  Lutheran  Quarterly. 


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GENESIS 


By  HINCKLEY  GILBERT  MITCHELL,  Ph.D.,D.D.,  Professor 
of  Hebrew  and  Old  Testament  Exegesis  in  Boston  University. 

Cloth,  377  fages.    Price,  go  cents  net  ;  by  mail,  97  cents 


"  The  introduction  to  this  volume  on  Genesis  gives  the  very  best  and  clear- 
est analysis  of  the  book,  according  to  the  '  modern  critical  theories,'  to  be 
had  anywhere."  —  The  Presbyterian. 

"  Genesis  has  always  been  one  of  the  most  popular  books  of  the  Bible,  yet 
in  some  ways  it  is  one  of  the  most  difficult.  These  difficulties  arise  partly 
from  the  book  itself  and  partly  from  the  popular  conception  of  the  book.  It 
takes  scholarship  to  handle  the  first  class  of  difficulties,  and  courage  the  sec- 
ond ;  and  Dr.  Mitchell  has  both  scholarship  and  courage.  .  .  .  The  notes 
are  learned  and  brief  and  have  a  vivacity  that  make  Genesis  seem  quite  a 
modern  book."  —  Boston  Transcript. 


GALATIANS 

By  BENJAMIN  WISNER  BACON,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of 
New  Testament  Criticism  and  Exegesis  in  Yale  University. 

Cloth,  135  pages.    Price,  50  cents  net ;  by  mail,  55  cents 

"Learned,  vigorous,  and  stimulating." —  American  Journal  of  Theology. 
"  We  know  of  no  commentary  which  gives  a  better  exposition  in  so  brief  a 
compass."  —  The  Reform  Church  Review. 


COLOSSIANS  AND  EPHESIANS 

By  GROSS  ALEXANDER.  Editor  of  The  Methodist  Review. 

Cloth,  132  pages.     Price,  50  cents  ;  by  mail,  55  cents 

"  Judging  from  the  volumes  that  have  appeared,  the  general  editor  of  these 
commentaries  has  been  very  successful  in  getting  commentators  who  have 
the  skill  so  to  treat  the  books  of  the  Bible  that  they  come  to  the  men  of  to-day 
with  vital  power.  The  introductions  to  these  two  epistles  are  marvels  of  com- 
pactness :  yet  all  that  is  necessary  to  those  for  whom  this  series  is  intended 
for  an  understanding  of  these  letters  will  be  found  here." — Boston  Transcript. 


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DEUTERONOMY 

By  PROFESSOR  W.  G.  JORDAN,  of  Queens  University. 

Price,  75  cents  net 

ISAIAH 

By  JOHN  E.  McFADYEN,  Professor  of  Old  Testament  Literature 
and  Exegesis  in  Knox  College,  Toronto. 

Price,  go  cents  net 


JOB 


By  GEORGE  A.  BARTON,  A.M..  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Biblical 
Literature  and  Semitic  Languages  in  Bryn  Mawr  College. 

Price,  90  cents  net 

The  commentary  differs  from  the  large  majority  of  commentaries  on  Job,  in 
that  its  author  believes  that  the  Hebrew  poet  was  as  great  in  religious 
insight  as  in  poetic  genius,  and  that  he  did  not  leave  the  problem  of  suffer- 
ing unsolved,  but  proposed  for  it  a  solution,  the  most  profound  that  can  be 
suggested,  and  that  a  religious  solution. 


JUDGES 

By  E.  L.  CURTIS. 


Cloth.     Price,  75  cents  net 


In  general  style  this  addition  to  the  "  Bible  for  Home  and  School"  follows 
the  deservedly  popular  commentaries  already  published  in  the  series.  There 


disposal  of  the  general  reader  the  results  of  the  best  modern  Biblical  scholar- 
ship. The  editing  has  been  conservative,  though  no  established  facts  have 
been  ignored.  The  circulation  of  the  compact  and  convenient  volumes  of 
the  series  of  which  this  is  one  cannot  fail  to  stimulate  the  intelligent  use  of 
the  Bible  in  the  home  and  in  the  school. 

^  MATTHEW 

By  PROFESSOR  A.  T.  ROBERTSON,  of  the  Southern  Baptist 
Theological  Seminary. 

Price,  60  cents  net 


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The  Empire  of  Christ 


A  STUDY  OF  THE  MISSIONARY  ENTERPRISE  IN 
THE  LIGHT  OF  MODERN  RELIGIOUS  THOUGHT 

BY  BERNARD   LUCAS 

Cloth,  i2tno,  $.#o  net;  by  mail,  $.89 

An  attempt  to  re-state  in  terms  which  are  in  harmony  with 
our  altered  theological  thought  and  our  changed  social  out- 
look, the  old  but  abiding  responsibility  of  the  Church  for 
the  salvation  of  the  world.  It  is  an  endeavor  to  make  dis- 
tinct and  definite  that  vision  of  empire  which  was  in  the 
mind  of  the  Church's  greatest  seer  when  he  declared,  "  The 
kingdoms  of  this  world  have  become  the  empire  of  our  God 
and  of  His  Christ." 

By  the  Author  of  "  The  Faith  of  a  Christian,"  "  Conversa- 
tions with  Christ,"  "  The  Fifth  Gospel,"  etc. 


The  Religions  of  Eastern  Asia 

BY  HORACE  GRANT  UNDERWOOD,  D.D. 

Cloth,  izrno,  267  pages,  $1.50  net ;  by  matt,  $/.<5o 

A  discussion  of  the  various  aspects  of  Asiatic  worship  —  the 
Shintoism  of  Japan,  and  the  Shamanism  of  Korea,  in  addition 
to  the  wider  faiths  of  Taoism,  Confucianism,  and  Buddhism. 
Of  exceptional  value  to  any  who  may  come  in  contact  with 
any  of  these  forms  of  world-religion. 


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BY  W.  H.   P.  FAUNCE 

President  of  Brown  University 

The  Educational  Ideal  in  the  Ministry 

Cloth,  $r^s  "ft !  by  mail,  t'-3S 

"  With  a  largeness  of  vision  and  soundness  of  advice  that  are 
notable,  the  whole  book  treats  of  the  minister's  unequalled  re- 
sponsibilities and  opportunities  in  a  time  of  changing  views."  — 
New  York  Observer. 


BY  THE  REV.   R.  J.   CAMPBELL 

Minister  of  the  City  Temple,  London 

The  New  Theology 

Cloth,  crown  8vo,  $r.so;  by  mail,  %iJbo 

"An  outline  of  what  one  man,  in  a  London  pulpit,  is  doing 
towards  interpreting  the  gospel  in  terms  consistent  with  modern 
science  and  historical  criticism,  and  its  appeal  is  not  to  scholars 
so  much  as  to  the  average  man,  especially  the  man  who  has  lost 
faith  in  the  traditional  creeds  and  in  the  organized  religion  of 
the  day."  —  Congregationalist. 

New  Theology  Sermons 

Cloth,  tf-SO  *ft*'  by  mail,  $i.(a 


A   SELECTION    OF   THE    SERMONS    PREACHED    IN    THE    CITY 

TEMPLE,  LONDON 

"  All  who  know  Mr.  Campbell  admit  his  goodness  and  trans- 

parent sincerity.     He  has  stirred  the  intellectual  and  religious 

life  of  England  as  it  has  not  been  stirred  for  many  years."  —  The 

Standard. 

Christianity  and  the  Social  Order 

Cloth,  izmo,  $t.jo;  by  mail,  $1.62 

"  There  is  a  wonderful  force  of  conviction  felt  pulsating  in  these 
clear  and  trenchant  sentences."  —  Standard. 

Thursday  Mornings  at  the  City  Temple 


Cloth,  I2mo,  tljo  net  ;  by  mail, 
A  selection  of  the  informal  addresses  which  have  done  much  to 
give  Mr.  Campbell  a  larger  personal  following  than  any  other 
preacher  in  England. 

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THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


NOV7  1989 


Series  9482 


3  1205  00232  7284 


A     000  894  024     9 


